Posted by The Crux |
According to a recent Gallup Poll, the public likes Democrats better than Republicans. Below are the percentages of people who responded favorably to one party when asked which party's politicians would do a better job on national security, national prosperity, and overall:
Democrats Republicans
Overall 53% 38%
Prosperity 54% 34%
National Security 47% 42%
Results were "fairly balanced" from January 2003 - February 2005. Since then, Democrats have enjoyed increased "favorability," but Gallup reported:
"The recent gain in the Democratic Party's image advantage is due primarily to a sharp decline in Americans' favorable perceptions of the Republican Party...."
In other words, people to see the Republican Party as the worse of two evils. Why is that? I suspect it boils down to an old quote by Abe Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people some of the time, ... but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
President Bush and key Republican politicians have too often chosen symbolism over substance and partisan gain over policy solutions, giving the impression that the GOP has become the Party of Pretense....
It's not fair to label all Republican politicians as Pretenders, but such is the nature of public opinion -- a realm where a few bad apples can spoil it for the bunch and any tactic can eventually backfire.
In May 2003, two months after we invaded Iraq, President Bush put on a flight suit, stepped onto an aircraft carrier, and said "Mission Accomplished." The Hollywood-ish costume and choreography aside, how could the public not eventually see the pretenses? Anyone looking back just a year later would notice that troops were still dying in Iraq and we taxpayers were still shelling out billions.
Before we invaded Iraq in 2003, much of the public believed that Iraq 1) had weapons of mass destruction and 2) was connected to the 9/11 attacks, because President Bush and key Republicans said so. Since then, these myths have been debunked. How could the public not question the trustworthiness of Republicans involved in that pre-war campaign?
It's not just the war. From a gussied-up stage in Jackson Square, President Bush promised that he (and his Republican appointees) would rebuild New Orleans. Two-plus years later, that city is still a mess and evidence of corruption has surfaced.
Then there's the glaring hypocrisy. The President and key Republicans spent years publicly trumpeting about family-values-trumpeting. Just in the last two years, the public learned that some key Republicans were involved in "unwholesome" activities: e.g., flirting with under-aged boys (Mark Foley, FL, whose acts Republican House leaders overlooked), prostitution (David Vitter, LA), and possibly soliciting public sex (Larry Craig, ID). How could the public not notice the disconnects?
No doubt, corruption touches some members of both political parties, but since 2005, we've seen an unusually high number of Republican officials not only get implicated in corruption scandals, but also get convicted and sentenced: e.g., Duke Cunningham (CA), Robert Ney (OH), Steven Griles (Interior Dept.)....
This year, we've also seen that government contractors who've taken billions of tax dollars to help in Iraq and Afghanistan may have committed waste or fraud. Much of this occurred while Republicans controlled Congress and while the President oversaw the executive agencies that are supposed to oversee government contracts. How can the public not question their ability or desire to protect the taxpayers?
The most recent case of orchestrated partisan pretenses involved the Petraeus/Betray Us ad that anti-war group Moveon.org ran in the New York Times. Recent polling data indicates that most people (58%) disliked like the ad (Rasmussen). And it was perfectly appropriate for citizens and politicians to say that they disliked it.
But was it an issue deserving weeks of national attention? The ad ran for one day before lining people's litter boxes -- and that was two weeks ago. Mean-spirited as it may have been, the ad was not illegal and posed no concrete threat to national security.
Instead of having their say then letting this non-issue die, key Republican politicians tried to stir up the public's emotions against their Democratic colleagues (who neither designed nor paid for the ad) by crafting a resolution condemning the ad and trying to bully Democrats into voting for it.
That sort of thing plays well with hyper-emotional voters who feel compelled to identify enemies on which to blame things. However, most Americans are rational enough to see that such stunts only distract our leaders' focus away from substantive issues -- like affordable healthcare, decent-paying jobs, contractors who rip off the taxpayers, the lives and dollars being lost in Iraq....
Most voters will overlook a lot of things, but betrayal of their trust -- and the sense that they've been played as fools -- are not among them.
My advice, to all of the good Republican politicians who'd like to stay in office: 1) don't be afraid to honestly discuss real issues, and 2) stop allowing your bad-apple colleagues to spoil your image.
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