Washington Post: Democratic Victories Bad For Dems, Good For "Gleeful" Republicans
April 2, 2007 -- 10:46 AM EST // //
Okay, welcome to our first installment of The Public's Always Ahead of the Press and the Pundits -- or "PAP" for short.
Remember how during the 2006 elections literally every political development of any kind was interpreted by pundits and the press as good for the GOP -- that is, until the evidence to the contrary became too overwhelming to ignore?
Well, guess what -- that media narrative is back! Today's Washington Post has a long front-page piece reporting that Republicans are "gleeful" because Dem victories of late have emboldened the party to challenge Bush on a host of national security issues. While the piece demonstrates occasional balance, this excerpt is beyond ridiculous:
Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a "political price" at the polls: "If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react."...Most Republicans are convinced the president will win his veto standoff over House and Senate war spending bills that would impose mandatory troop withdrawals from Iraq....
That would slow [Democrats'] momentum as they challenge Bush on the territory he has made his political fortune on: terrorism....
Cole, the Oklahoma Republican, warned Democrats not to tamper with the national security laws that Bush secured after the 2001 terrorist attacks. "Americans don't want to reopen the programs that have protected them since 9/11," he said.
The piece goes on to opine that for the GOP, such Dem aggressiveness "could prove to be a political gift."
First off, let's pause to applaud the admirable selflessness of GOP Rep. Tom Cole. Though his job is to get Republicans elected to the House, he nonetheless left partisanship behind to offer the Democrats -- his opponents -- some free advice on how they can stay politically healthy. What a gallant fellow.
Seriously, given what happened in the 2006 elections, and given what polls are telling us today with virtual unanimity, how in the heck could anyone report with no skepticism whatsoever the absurd idea that the boldness of the Dem Congressional majority right now "has Republican political operatives gleeful"? That phrase is, like, so June 2006. What's more, why are we uncritically swallowing the idea that if Bush "wins" the legislative showdown over Iraq, it'll automatically be good politically for the GOP? Poll after poll after poll shows that the public overwhelmingly supports the Dem Congress' efforts to end the war, and indeed many want the Dems to go further than they are in reigning in Bush. From the March 29th Pew poll:
Do you think Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far or not far enough in challenging George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, or are they handling this about right?Too far 23%
Not far enough 40%
About right 30%
Don't know/Refused 7%
So seventy percent think Dems' aggressiveness is either about right or insufficently aggressive. Meanwhile, on the broader question of national security issues in general -- the grounds for the alleged GOP "gleefulness" about Dem overreaching that the Post is informing us of -- check out this Rasmussen poll from March 23:
On the broader question of National Security, the GOP fares better but not nearly as well as in years gone by. Forty-six percent (46%) of voters trust the Democrats more on National Security while 44% prefer Republicans.
Look, efforts to gauge public opinion on complex matters like these can be inconclusive, and it's of course possible the Dems could overreach at some point. But can we at least wait until there's a single shred of evidence that this is happening at all, much less that the public disapproves of it, before we report that Republicans are "gleeful" about it? More broadly, given all that's happened over the past nine months, how can it be that the cruise control setting for many in the Beltway media on issues from the Attorney Purge to Iraq is still that Dems should tread carefully about confronting the White House in ways the public supports lest that same public turn on them? What the hell has to happen for this to stop?
Update: Incredibly, the Washington Post's most recent poll clearly demonstrates the absurdity of its current thesis. Needless to say, the paper's own numbers -- even though they're directly relevant to the topic at hand -- weren't included in its story today.
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