Rove Strategy for 2006

Karl Rove speaking at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee spelled out the strategy for Republicans to use in the 2006 campaign. It will emphasize national security and the campaign against terrorism, while criticizing Democrats for being weak liberals who will cut and run in Iraq if they come into power.

"At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

This is the same false theme used in the 2004 Presidential campaign. The Democrats cannot allow this to be the issue again. They need to confront it directly and turn it against the Republicans. The Administration's decision to invade Iraq rather than being a response to 9/11 terrorism has actually imperiled our position in the world. We squandered the goodwill that existed after the World Trade Center attack by trying to link Iraq to terrorism. We turned friendly countries into opponents and inflamed countries that may not have liked us into mortal enemies. We used US resources totaling over $200 billion dollars and 2,200 American lives fighting the wrong war. We could have used that money to make Afghanistan a success, to capture Al Qaeda members, and to pursue terrorists. Imagine if we had invested a portion of those resources in aid to the Muslim third world, limiting the rush to suicide bombing and martyrdom.

The Democratic response needs to continually charge that Republican efforts have increased terrorism rather than stemming it, that invading Iraq and fumbling almost all efforts after the initial military success make them incapable of insuring the security of the United States.