With friends like these... - Granite Grok

With friends like these…

As we start the week, the words of powerful US Senators spoken late last week and during Sunday talking heads shows reverberate across the land. The Dems and their accomplices throughout the main stream media just can’t trumpet them loud enough. "Bush wrong on Iraq," they say. "He must engage North Korea directly," abandoning his own administration’s chosen policy. Fox News Democratic analylist Susan Estrich provides one example:
Kaye Bailey Hutchison, the senator from the president’s home state of Texas, who’s been staunch up to now, was talking this week about the “chaos” in Iraq and talking up the possibility of a partition plan.
Way to go, Kaye! Couldn’t wait two more weeks, huh? Then there’s Richar Lugar- the mainstream media’s favorite Republican policy wonk- well, not really, except when he criticizes a Republican president. Lugar joined his fellow Republicans in the anti-Bush administration policy feeding frenzy on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: But you’re suggesting, Senator Lugar, a stepped-up, bilateral conversation between the U.S. and North Korea?
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LUGAR: I believe that is going to happen. I hope it happens sooner rather than later. But I think it is inevitable, if this is to be resolved diplomatically.
The fact that Sec’y of State Condoleeza Rice’s diplomatic efforts have seemingly been effective to a degree in that China has in fact applied real pressure on the North Koreans gets the short shrift. Dittoes Iraq. The president said in his weekly radio address that we must change strategy in Iraq as the situation evolves. He knows that. Said President Bush Saturday,
Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging: Our goal is victory. What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal. Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy
"Oh but Doug, these Senators are Americans. They have opinions. They SHOULD speak up if the president is wrong." True, but then again, perhaps it is THEY who are wrong. They don’t have the exact same information as the president does, nor do they have the same responsibilities as the Commander-in-Chief does.
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Furthermore, with the election a mere two weeks off, what do they accomplish by publicly criticizing core administration policies, other than to scare the casual voters into the Democratic camp- costing the president’s party to possibly lose the congressional branch of government to his biggest and bitterest detractors aside from the terrorists themselves. Liberal Democrat Susan Estrich states it best (again, regarding Kaye Bailey Hutchinson’s abandonment of Bush):
you really can’t blame her, but in politics, everything is timing, and even she might be able to wait two weeks before deserting the ship, lest it sink precipitously.

And sinking is what the Republican ship appears to be doing. By seeking their distance, Republicans, perhaps unwittingly, only affirm the public sense that this election is indeed a referendum on the president and his policies, and that the president’s own party is no longer behind him. That’s my definition of a sinking ship. And what does that make the people jumping??

Who wants to vote for a coward? If you disagree with the president, you might as well vote for the other party. Republicans are not going to save themselves in the last two weeks by abandoning the president and blaming each other. If that’s the strategy, forget it.

I’ve been wagering steak dinners at the Palm with my Republican friends – Sean Hannity, Rich Galen, Judge Andrew Napolitano – on whether Democrats will take control of Congress. I’ve lost enough elections in my day that I’m not celebrating yet. But watching Republicans behave like losers in these closing days, I’m beginning to get hungry. It’s starting to look like I could be eating a slew of steak dinners at the Palm.

If the House is lost to the Democrats due to a media-driven (easy to do as a result of Republican stupidity) mass disaffection, do these Republican naysayers think ANYTHING would get better with a Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Rangel?

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