Faced with potential GOP defeat in both chambers, Bush and Cheney aimed to avert that by convincing voters that they cannot risk giving the opposition party any power in Washington.
“However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses,” Bush told a raucous crowd of about 5,000 GOP partisans packed in an arena at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, one of his stops Monday. “That’s what’s at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq.”
Iraq is over. We can do little to nothing more. The war is over. Finished. It is an ex-parrot. Pretending the GOP wants to “win” and the Democrats want to “lose” is absurd, as there is no winning and losing anymore. There is just dying and election-year rhetoric.
BTW- It really is amazing what Ann Althouse will excuse away. It is almost like she has no principles.
cd6
You know what the sad part is, if the Dems take the house and pull funding from this debacle, and the troops are forced home, the right wingosphere will insist to their graves that we could have won if Dems had given our troops the chance.
chopper
i used to get so frustrated at how the whole ‘a vote for the democrats is a vote for the terrorists’ bit worked on americans.
now it doesn’t work anymore. people aren’t buying it.
Steve
The Democrats are not defunding the war. That day is not even close.
Mary
Fixed it for you.
Of course, I’m a liberal woman with boobs, so I am inherently untrustworthy anyway. Unless I self-Amazonize.
Fixed it for me.
Bombadil
The comments seem rather typical of the Republicans, too. Kerry calls the people who got us into the war stupid, and they immediately claim he’s calling the troops stupid.
Idiots.
ThymeZone
You are setting a standard for honest blogging, John. Raising the bar. If there’s a Nobel Prize for this, then you should be nominated.
Pooh
OMFG, is John Cole going to go on an anti-Althouse binge? (Crossing fingers). Every time she opens her mouth, I’m thankful that I went to school one state over so I didn’t get infected by her faux-populist, reality-impervious drivel passing as insight.
Punchy
Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Andrew
One must not confuse a lack of principles with a lack of intelligence. However, as Ms Althouse personally demonstrates, it is possible for one person to be clearly lacking both, to an extreme degree.
Adam
I, for one, will settle for nothing less in Iraq than Victory. V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
p.lukasiak
my question is “Where are the Democratic veterans who served this country in war who should be screaming BLOODY MURDER about this kind of rhetoric from Bush.?”
Dave
How does this kind of bullshit rhetoric coming from Bush and Cheney’s mouth do anything for anyone? Other than make me want to bitch slap both of them.
The president should be above this kind mindlessness.
I wonder if the WH press core will ever ask him, which Dems want us to lose?
Filthy McNasty
The defining charactersistic of liberals: if they disagree with you, you must lack intelligence and/or principles.
Like Althouse or not, you cannot honestly claim that she is not intelligent, nor claim that she is without principles. You can claim it, just not honestly.
John Cole has crossed surely this line into the liberal sphere, because disagreement with a person can only mean that that person is stupid. When one resides in the rarefied air of elitist curmudgeons, that is how one relates to people.
To believe that Iraq is “over” is to be profoundly selfish, un-American, and naive.
jcricket
See Fighting Dems – and note that nearly all Iraq/Afghanistan war vets running for office are doing so as Democrats
See also The Iraq & Afhganistan Veterans of America – a non-partisan group that has uncovered the nefarious liberal plot to overwhelmingly vote for legislation that ensures troops have funding before, during and after the war for their needs. On the other hand, we have the Republicans who are content to use the troops as sacrificial board game pieces and to score rhetorical points in the game of “global thermonuclear war” they’re apparently playing.
Maybe they vets aren’t shouting loudly enough because they’re one of the 15,000 who were seriously injured during the war and they’ve lose their ability to speak, or make it to a protest without someone driving them. Like Tammy Duckworth, who’s busy trying to cut and run without both of her legs.
sglover
The interesting thing about the linked WaPo article is that the Idiot Prince is spreading the disinfo in — Sugarland, Texas. AKA the formerly safe district of the Rt. Hon. Tom DeLay. If things were going well, President Fuckwit wouldn’t have to visit the district at all. And even there he’s gotta speak in front of the usual vouchsafed gaggle of pre-screened dupes and morons. Yet another testament to the “genius” of Karl Rove.
I’m beginning to think that the many disasters and fuck-ups launched by Bush the Lesser may actually have quite a lot of redeeming value, in the long run. I think that he’s almost singlehandedly* discrediting a kind of truly poisonous wish-thinking that’s been growing more pronounced in “conservative” thinking over the last few decades. True, the worthless punk is leaving a helluva lot of damage for his successor. But on the bright side, it looks like he is to the 2000 era GOP what Herbert Hoover was to its 1930’s predecessor.
* “Singlehandedly’s probably the wrong word here, unless one means the single hand that Cheney’s got stuck up his ventriloquist dummy’s ass.
Andrew
Why the fuck not? I have no idea if she’s a good professor or a nice person in real life and I don’t care. It’s quite possible. However, her blogging is neither intelligent nor principled. At all.
However, her worst sin, by far, is that her blogging is just boring. I don’t get why anyone reads her.
kchiker
Althouse is downright lucid compared to her commenters. She brings up Obama in one thread and the chorus of hate begins. It was downright bizarre. Everything from
“What has he ever done to write a book about?” to “How dare he race-bait?” (re: the Bush-Purell story) to “He’s just trying to mask his socialist agenda”. I wish I were exaggerating. It was almost 70% of the comments were written by Rush Limbaugh himself…only with the added cloak of anonymity. I don’t go there any more.
Pooh
Filthy is like Gary Ruppert 2.0, replacing “The Fact Is” with a variation of “The Defining Characteristic of Liberals is” followed by some unsupported and likely unsupportable ad hominem nonsense.
Tom in Texas
Did someone named “Filthy McNasty”all someone ELSE a curmudgeon? And I’ll give Repubs this. They never call their opponents stupid. Traitorous Osama loving babykilling scum that deserves to be locked up for treason and mass murder, sure — but they would NEVER call someone stupid. Only a liberal would do something so tacky.
Pooh
I think I stopped when she spouted off that Sam Alito was secretly a moderate, pro-choice who was skeptical of executive claims of authority…
sglover
I, for one, will settle for nothing less in Iraq than Victory. V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
This raises an issue that ought to divert our right-wing “thinkers” for a good month or so: Where can we have the surrender ceremony if the Tigris is too shallow for the battleship Missouri? Should we dredge the river, or move the ship overland on rollers?
Filthy McNasty
Intellectually dishonest in the extreme, but not surprising coming from an extremist. You’ll do just fine under Mr. Cole’s tutelage.
SeesThroughIt
You are, of course, correct. However…what a defeatocrat! How many terrorists did you propvide aid and comfort to today, hmmm? Have you chopped off the heads of any infidels, John al-Cole?
Sorry…just had to get the necessary wingnuttery out of the way there.
A while back, Kimmitt posted the German term for this (I’m completely blanking on it right now–dammit! Help me out here, Kimmitt!). It was the German attitude post-WWI: “We would’ve won if certain elements of our society hadn’t worked to undermine us from within!”
Pooh
Not your best work, you can usually get at least 4 grafs in without including any content at all. Two lines is simply pitiful.
I’m all verklempt, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: Filthy McNasty, neither filthy nor especially nasty. Discuss.
RSA
Filthy’s surreal spoofitude surpasses all expectations:
Love it, especially the sorta-kinda parallels in unprincipled/selfish and unintelligent/naive. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Republican observation if it didn’t take refuge in patriotism.
Pooh
Dolchstosslegende
Bombadil
I thought he was a new character for a Happy Meals ad. “Don’t be Filthy McNasty — put your trash in the proper receptacle!”
Zifnab
It’s so secret even his rulings don’t show it.
SeesThroughIt
Found it–it’s dolchstosslegende From the wiki:
As Kimmitt pointed out, wingers have been setting this table for quite some time now. Best believe they’re going to gorge themselves on it when the time comes.
Punchy
Anyone else read this and immediately think “that’s the Geto Boys!”??
Hey Captain Cole:
He just called your military-serving ass “un-American”. Stew on that gem for awhile. Like a gut-punch, eh?
Andrew
He is a little bit smelly though, and needs to brush his teeth.
Althouse stands in stark contrast to, say, John Derbyshire, who is both intelligent and principled (indeed self-admittedly principled about being a bit crazy and racist) or Blogs for Bush, who are not at all intelligent, but quite devoted to the principle of worshipping Dear Leader.
Althouse has none of these, um, traits.
Steve
It’s off limits to call Althouse unprincipled – apparently because she claims to be principled – but it’s perfectly reasonable to call John Cole un-American for his opinions about Iraq. The irony is so palpable that I’m afraid I have to call spoof.
Davebo
Not if you’ve ever read her in the past.
Filthy McNasty
John’s rant is un-American (would you prefer “irresponsible”?) because we owe it to the Iraqis to see this project through to the end, warts and all. John Cole cannot see past his anger at Bush for the warts. His past military experience is irrelevant; he’s as anti-military as Kerry is (as shown by Kerry’s ill-informed comment making the rounds of the Net today). You might be fooled by Cole, but I’m not.
Calling Althouse unprincipled is as honest as calling Ruth Ginsberg a Bush crony. Saying it does not make it true.
Pooh
Spoof.
Richard Bottoms
This should hit the spot:
Flawed
sparky
Dear Mr Nasty:
Sorry but I disagree with you about Ann. I used to think she was principled. But I turned out to be uh, wrong.
Specific example: her op-ed piece about the district court’s poorly constructed wiretapping decision in Detroit was itself factually wrong. She didn’t correct it, even when it was brought to her attention.
Otherwise, generally speaking, she is a participant in the “let’s distract by talking about something else!” game. Recent example: comparing what Josh Marshall said to what the President said about Dems and terrorists. Anyone who pretends that those remarks are somehow equivalent is either a shill or a fool. I don’t think Ann is a fool. I just think she likes being Miss Popular and doesn’t really care where the traffic comes from so long as it keeps coming.
My own suggestion is that she should run the styles section at Red State.
Bas-O-Matic
Filthy McNasty Says:
Like Althouse or not, you cannot honestly claim that she is not intelligent, nor claim that she is without principles. You can claim it, just not honestly.
I nothing about her intelligence per se, but can say with some certainty that the personaility she reveals at her blog is perhaps one of the most banal people I have ever come into contact with. This is far to kind to her. This is more accurate.
She is also incredibly dishonest when she decides to start bashing people, as John and Jeff Goldstein could attest.
KH
I don’t know from intelligence, but Althouse’s arch would-be correction of Josh Marshall is just silly. Most people consider the Oxford English Dictionary a reliable, even conservative source, & it doesn’t remotely support her claim. If she’s going to play the insufferable know-it-all, she needs to be know more.
Krista
Tammy Duckworth has more balls and brains than the entire GOP and right blogosphere combined.
And Filthy? If you disagree with John’s viewpoint, that’s your prerogative, but your side of the fence has thrown out the term “un-American” AT your fellow Americans way too many times, and for you to be throwing it at someone who literally put his ass on the line for his country is pretty damn low, and it says a lot more about you than it does about John Cole.
Richard 23
Heh. Don’t you mean un-Iraqian? Or anti-quaqmarian?
Shut up and sing, Filthy McSpoofy!
crack
Iraq=Ex-Parrot. Very nice.
jcricket
I’m with you there, and perhaps it’s why they tried to enlist her name (along with Webb) when criticizing Kerry’s remarks.
I love how Republicans can’t even maintain their intellectual consistency for a campaign season.
Day 1: Webb + Duckworth = Terrorist enabling pacifist military haters
Day 2: Webb + Duckworth = Proud military vets smeared by Kerry’s remarks about Bush
Or:
Day 1: Gays = Velvet Mafia secretly sent to infiltrate Republican party and take it down from the inside
Day 2: Gays = Unfairly maligned by the Sexual McCarthyism of outing adulterous, publicly homophobic by secretly gay Republican congressmen.