Lest you think there’s any question as to 2006 being an election where issues and records will be discussed, with two weeks left there’s a chance we’ll be subjected to pandering to raw F-E-A-R. Dick Morris:
With only two weeks left ’til Election Day, Republicans won’t save themselves with phony optimism – pathetic claims that, somehow, they’re mounting a comeback. They need to sound a note of alarm and fill the airwaves with specifics of exactly what will happen if the Democrats triumph.
But inside-baseball talk about a Nancy Pelosi speakership won’t do the job. The GOP needs to focus on the concrete ways in which a Democratic victory would threaten our safety.
Here’s one possible ad: We see and hear a wiretapped conversation, with a terrorist revealing his worst plans to his associate – and, inadvertently, to government eavesdroppers, too. Then, when he’s about to spill the beans on when and where the next attack is going to come, the line should go dead, with a dial tone, with a machine voice saying “This wiretap terminated in the name of privacy rights by the Democratic U.S. Congress.”
The announcer can then say, “If the Democrats win, the National Security Agency will never be able to listen in as the terrorists are plotting to attack us.”
Do you often wonder why our politics has become so poisonous and turned so many voters on both sides and the middle off? Look no further than this advice from campaign strategist Morris. Subtext: “Vote Democrat And You And Your Kids Could Die.” Demonization is the name of the game.
You might be naive and ask: “Why doesn’t the GOP run on its record for the past six years and what it has accomplished?” Fill in the blanks yourself — and we think Democrats AND Republicans know the answer to that one. More Morris:
Republicans are doomed unless they can get their base back. But the GOP base is the best informed group of voters in the nation, with educational levels consistently higher than their Democratic counterparts’. They follow politics closely and are the easiest voters to reach via the news media, cable TV and talk radio.
A message like this could have a snowballing effect on the Republican base. The word could percolate through the clutter, reminding voters of their true priorities.
And Morris is blunt about what will happen if the GOP doesn’t play the Democrats Will Enable Murdering Terrorists To Kill You subtext card:
Otherwise, we know what is going to happen. All the borderline GOP incumbents will lose, while Democrats like Sen. Bob Menendez, a scandal waiting to happen, survive.
But if the Republicans frankly address their deserting base and speak plainly of the need to hold steady in the face of the terrorist threat, the base can come back.
Again, it would be government OF the base, BY the base and FOR the base — getting power by turning one segment of the country against the other. And largely governing for only one ideological part of a supposedly UNITED States of America.
“The only thing we have to fear is not using fear itself…”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.