{"id":322,"date":"2003-02-24T12:57:05","date_gmt":"2003-02-24T17:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/322.html"},"modified":"2003-02-24T12:57:05","modified_gmt":"2003-02-24T17:57:05","slug":"democrats-starting-to-get-smart-and-tough-at-the-same-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/democrats-starting-to-get-smart-and-tough-at-the-same-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats starting to get smart and tough at the same time"},"content":{"rendered":"

You had to dig deep to find the single most exciting article in today’s Washington Post<\/a> (it was on page 19), but it’s definitely worth reading. Here’s the nugget sentence: “On an almost daily basis now, congressional Democrats are warning of a ‘credibility gap’ between what Bush says to the American people and what he does through new government policies.”<\/p>\n

The piece notes that Democratic leaders “circulated ‘Caught on Film: a photo history of the Bush credibility gap,’ highlighting ‘various examples of the Administration making promises at various photo-ops and then slashing funding for the very priorities it stressed.’ It covered everything from education to programs for the poor.”<\/p>\n

As far as Carpetbagger is concerned, this is exactly the right strategy at the right time. A year ago, Paul Glastris wrote a cover story for The Washington Monthly asking why Democrats can’t get tough<\/a>. By going after the Bush administration for its constant, almost habitual, use of falsehoods and deceptions, Democrats are effectively standing up and saying, “No more.”<\/p>\n

For too long, congressional Democrats have lacked the backbone to go after Bush in this fashion. It’s one of the key reasons, I believe, the party was unsuccessful in 2002. If the Democrats’ central message is “Bush is a nice, honest guy who likes tax cuts too much,” you don’t need <\/a>overpaid pollsters to tell you this is a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

Bush has been playing fast and loose with the truth since the campaign. While the national media seemed more interested in portraying Al Gore as a “serial fibber,” and obsessing over Bill Clinton’s lies about his extramarital affairs, Bush has lied repeatedly — without consequence — about matters of national import. Carpetbagger is nearly giddy about the Democrats’ new approach of, gasp, calling Bush to account for saying things that turn out not to be true.<\/p>\n

Oddly, the Post article quotes an anonymous “top Democratic pollster” who suggested the strategy may fail — and indeed, backfire on Democrats — because research data reflects that “the American people trust Bush and disdain highly partisan politics, especially when the country is edging toward war.”<\/p>\n

Call Carpetbagger crazy but, isn’t that the point of the project? Of course the American people tend to “trust Bush” — Democrats haven’t done a good enough job explaining why he’s not trustworthy. Memo to Daschle & Co.: Ignore the pollsters. Go after Bush, rally the base, and chip away at the ridiculous idea that the Bush White House is honest and honorable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You had to dig deep to find the single most exciting article in today’s Washington Post (it was on page 19), but it’s definitely worth reading. Here’s the nugget sentence: “On an almost daily basis now, congressional Democrats are warning of a ‘credibility gap’ between what Bush says to the American people and what he […]<\/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-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","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=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}