{"id":1490,"date":"2004-03-30T14:33:38","date_gmt":"2004-03-30T19:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1490.html"},"modified":"2004-03-30T14:33:38","modified_gmt":"2004-03-30T19:33:38","slug":"another-white-house-strategy-dependent-on-public-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/another-white-house-strategy-dependent-on-public-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Another White House strategy dependent on public ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like Ryan Lizza<\/a>, I found the following part of a New York Times article<\/a> about the White House’s political strategy completely bizarre.<\/p>\n

One outside adviser to the White House said that Mr. Bush’s political staff was inclined to compromise on Ms. Rice’s testimony, judging the political costs of continuing to fight in the midst of a tight re-election campaign to outweigh any cost from showing flexibility on the principle. <\/p>\n

“It’s fair to say many of the senior political advisers understand the principle but have a more pragmatic view,” said the adviser, who insisted on anonymity, saying he wanted to keep his role behind the scenes. <\/p>\n

This adviser said that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior adviser and political strategist, wanted to move the election away from questions like “Were there intelligence failures?” and to put the focus instead on which candidate could better protect against any future efforts by terrorists to attack the United States. <\/p>\n

“If we’re going to have a discussion about W.M.D. and intelligence failures and Osama bin Laden, that’s not an election George W. Bush wins,” the adviser said. “If it’s about who keeps you safer, that’s the ground we want to be on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me see if I get this straight. If the election is about keeping Americans safe, Bush wins. If the election is about the dangers that make us unsafe in the first place, Kerry wins.<\/p>\n

This sure sounds like a distinction without a difference to me, but what do I know compared to a svengali like Rove?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Ryan Lizza, I found the following part of a New York Times article about the White House’s political strategy completely bizarre. One outside adviser to the White House said that Mr. Bush’s political staff was inclined to compromise on Ms. Rice’s testimony, judging the political costs of continuing to fight in the midst of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}