If the Democrats Don’t Hit Americans in the Gut with the Truth, The Republicans May Hold One-Party Control For Decades

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Do you feel outraged and betrayed by the White House?

Do you feel that the Busheviks are more interested in using terrorists as a tool to maintain power than in fighting terrorism?

Do you feel mad as Hell at how fear has been used to manipulate Americans in order to cover up for a failed administration in domestic and foreign policy?

That is what the Dems should get the rest of America to feel; not to think, but to feel in their guts.

However much we kick and scream about the outlandish, immoral fearmongering of the Bush Administration, it works. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle explained why. It’s because we haven’t strayed far from the fear of a rabbit being chased by a Rottweiler. What the Bush Administration is doing is just barking very loudly – and a lot of Americans are running for cover in fear. It’s a primal tool of demagogues that works, if it goes unchallenged.

The Democrats need to run ads that simply tell the truth. They’ve already pulled one such add after briefly posting it on the DNC site. That sort of cravenness won’t win elections.

Rove’s campaign of fear, and his narrative of the dastardly enemy who has to be faced down by turning America into a one-party dictatorship will continue to triumph if Bush’s real agenda and record of disastrous initiatives is not exposed directly, bluntly and in 30 second ads.

In the spring of 2004, we ran an editorial early that urged John Kerry to come out and define Bush before Rove defined Kerry. John must have not read our editorial. Because first they stereotyped him as an untrustworthy flip-flopper, then they swift boated him. As a result of Kerry’s failure to forcefully define Bush first, he came off looking like the caricature that the Bush slime machine had made him into.

Right now, despite the tidal wave of anti-Republican sentiment, Bush is going to gain ground with the continued repetition of the appeasement stereotypes of Democrats. This type of demagoguery works.

The Democrats better start running ads of Bush kicking out the CIA briefer who warned him of 9/11; ads of Bush saying when asked what happened to Osama, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."; ads of Bush saying there is no relationship between Iraq and 9/11; ads of Rumsfeld saying that the Iraq War would be over in six weeks but no more than six months; ads of the broken promises about the Iraq War turning around soon and being in the "last throes of insurgency."

We could go on and on, but you get the point.

The American people deserve the truth. They need to feel it in the gut. Because elections are no longer won by what goes on in the head; they are won by what goes on in the heart.

The Democrats should give it to them.

Bush is the appeaser; Bush has succeeded in enabling the goal of the terrorists to terrorize us; Bush has failed in defeating al-Qaeda by letting them escape to and live peacefully in Pakistan. Bush has made Iran into a regional power by weakening Iraq.

It’s time to define the Republicans as not being up to fighting a War on Terrorism.

And that’s easy to do, because all the Dems have to do is broadcast the truth. But they have to be brutally honest and pull no punches.

Over and over and over again. Until the truth drowns out the lies.

And Americans feel the truth in the their guts.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

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