Buchanan: "Cindy Sheehan may be catalyst of crisis for Bush presidency"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Cindy Sheehan: Anti-war catalyst
Posted: August 17, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Pat Buchanan

When he flew off to San Clemente, Calif., in the summer of 1969 for his August vacation, Richard Nixon was riding a wave of popularity. He had announced the first troop withdrawal from Vietnam. He had met the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on touchdown in the Pacific. He had become the first president to visit a captive nation with a triumphal tour of Bucharest. And he had just proposed a sweeping reform of welfare praised by both parties.

But when Nixon returned in September, a storm had broken. Wrote David Broder: "It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969. "The likelihood is great that they will succeed again." They did not succeed in breaking Nixon's presidency. He broke them. The crucial moment was his "Great Silent Majority" speech of Nov. 3, 1969, which rallied Middle America behind his war policy.

George W. Bush is approaching a similar moment of truth. And Cindy Sheehan may be the catalyst of crisis for the Bush presidency. As a Gold Star mother of a soldier son slain in Iraq, Sheehan has authenticity and moral authority. Wedded to the passion of her protest, these make her a magnet for a bored White House press corps camped in Crawford for August. Cindy and the president are the only stories in town. And as a source of daily derogatory commentary on the president, Sheehan is using the media, and the media are using her, for the same end: to bedevil George W. Bush.

They are succeeding. When one considers the non-stop cable TV coverage given the mother of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama teen missing in Aruba, Cindy Sheehan will soon be a household name. The more media she attracts, the more people she draws to Crawford. The more people who join Cindy in Crawford, the more media coverage they will attract. It is hard to see what breaks this cycle before Labor Day and the president's return.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45815

[rodeodance]

1. Pat said this last night on msnbc--and repeated it.

[ihaveaquestion]

2. Bush could end it by meeting with her...

but that's becoming increasingly unlikely. He's dug himself into a hole and will lose face trying to climb out.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

4. If he meets with her, it sends a message of "weakness" to his "base"

If he doesn't meet with her, it sends a message of apathy to everyone who is NOT in his "base."

So there really is no way to escape the fact that this man has been damaged, and in a very large, worldwide way.

EVERYONE is watching. On any given day, go to Google News and do a search on Cindy Sheehan. Look at how many global news agencies are following this on a daily basis.

So much for the concept of Bush being handled by "geniuses."

[jody]

5. "cindy sheehan" had 6,600 hits and "george bush" had 6,370 hits in

Google News.

[ihaveaquestion]

6. I'm beginning to believe the folks who say that *

is actually in charge and then it makes sense that things are so screwed up and getting worse. He's an abusive drunk and he's dragging the whole country, and by extension the world, into his disfunctional family model. His supporters are his enablers and the rest of us are his victims. We're all going to need Al-Anon recovery after 2008!

[jody]

3. Crawford was worried about fire ants and killer bees, now Cindy Sheehan!

[npincus]

7. more pearls of wisdom from Pat:

Buchanan my be a jerk, but I think his analysis and predictions are right on this time- including the long-awaited epipahany (highlighted in bold below) in store for those who've been buying the administration's bullsh*t about this war:

more from this column:


"If President Bush cannot describe "victory" in terms convincing enough to Americans willing to spend blood indefinitely, he will have to persuade them to stay the course by describing what a disaster defeat will mean for Iraq and for America's position in the world.

But to do that would raise a question: Why, then, in heaven's name, did America take such a risk, when Iraq was never a threat?

September could see the coalescing of an anti-war movement that both bedevils the White House and divides a Democratic Party that seeks to benefit from a losing war, without having to offer a plan to win it or end it, without being held accountable for having supported it, or responsible for undercutting it.

Our politics appear likely to become even more poisoned when the president returns from his troubled vacation."