Blumenthal: Kerry will win the patriot game

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Bush is trying and failing to dent the Democratic front runner's war record - just as Nixon did before him

Since the onset of the cold war, the Republicans have attempted to taint the Democrats as unpatriotic, in league with America's enemies, without and within. With the cold war's end, one of the central organising principles of the Republican political strategy dissolved. But in the aftermath of September 11, George Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove have reanimated the patriot game, and Democrats have been conflated with terrorists and tyrants.

The founding father of the Republican patriot game was Richard Nixon, whose career was borne along by impugning the patriotism of Democratic opponents and uncovering subversives whom he claimed represented the heart of the new deal. His relentless ambition, however, was thwarted when he found himself confronted by a war hero, John F Kennedy. In 1960, the game was over. But the Vietnam war gave Nixon the platform for his resurrection. Once he became president, the game of smearing the Democrats was reinvented as he set Vietnam veterans and hard hat, blue-collar workers against war protesters.

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Marco Trbovich served in the navy with Kerry, marched against the Vietnam war with him, worked in his campaigns, and is now the communications director of the United Steel Workers of America. "John's been in the foxhole," he told me. "He's endured, survived and never forgotten who these guys are. This is completely authentic. If you're a veteran of Vietnam you understand how unjustly the system can treat you. Now the economic system is treating them unjustly, and Bush is responsible. John's credibility with working-class men who didn't get college educations is enormous. A guy who pretends and puts on a jumpsuit doesn't get it."

Bush, in his interview this week on NBC's Meet the Press, styled himself as a "war president". But he finds himself in a quagmire of his own making and the patriot game has taken an unexpected turn.


Worth reading the whole thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1146135,00.html

[boobooday]

1. And where are all the Guardsmen who served with Bush?

Not only conspicuously absent, but not even available when they are offered a reward!

http://www.wgoeshome.com

Jeanette

[girl gone mad]

2. It's a big gamble for them..

because if they lose, they will to some extent lose their ability to label war protestors "unpatriotic".

[oasis]

3. Bring it on. (eom)