GOP attacking and distorting, because they CAN'T win on issues

[GOPBasher]

There they go again. The Republican party knows that if the nation focuses on the actual issues, they’ll lose. So, they’ll distract, attack and, of course, distract by attacking. That’s the reason we see Fox News talking about Jeramiah Wright roughly 45 hours per day. They don’t want to discuss the war, the economy, the environment, health care, energy, etc. So, they’ll just attack the shit out of the Democrats – right now, they’re focusing on Barack Obama because he is more likely going to be the nominee and, furthermore, they’ve already spent sixteen years attacking Hillary Clinton.

The Right’s attacks on Clinton are the reason her favorability ratings have been extremely high for a long time, and now they’re making sure Obama catches up to her. They’ll be sure to pounce on everything they possibly can. The Wright controversy illustrates it perfectly. They scoured everyone in Obama’s life to find anything, absolutely anything, to distort and attack. The closest they came to Obama was his pastor, and the worst thing they can find on this pastor is a 30-second sound bite of him making unpatriotic comments. If you examined every person in my life, and tried to find every proven record of quotes from them, I’m pretty sure you can come up with a great deal of terrible quotes. That means nothing. But, that’s it; they’ll just talk about this 30-second rant for the rest of the damn campaign, instead of a serious discussion about the issues.

Why must this be their strategy? In my first journal entry, I summarized the disaster of the Bush presidency. Well, to use the expression we’ve heard just short of a trillion times on Fox News lately: the “chickens have come home to roost” for the Republican party. A pew research center poll conducted February 20-24 illustrates their problem. The survey asked which party could do a better job handling each of twelve separate issues. The Democrats won on eleven of those issues, their sole losing issue being, “Dealing with the terrorist threat at home” (38% - 45%). The Democratic party won the following: “Making wise decisions about foreign policy” (45% - 40%), “Dealing with immigration” (43% - 38%), “Making wise decisions about what to do in Iraq” (47% - 37%), “Dealing with taxes” (49% - 37%), “Improving morality in the country” (44% - 34%), “Dealing with the economy” (53% - 34%), “Improving the educational system” (55% - 26%), “Reforming the US health care system” (56% - 26%), “Reforming government in Washington” (50% - 25%), “Dealing with the nation’s energy problems” (57% - 23%), and “Protecting the environment” (65% to 21%). (http://pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm.)

A USA Today and Gallup poll on February 8 – 10 showed the Democratic party with a 56% favorability rating with just 38% of people holding an unfavorable opinion. That same poll showed that just 41% hold a favorable opinion of the Republican party, and 52% hold an unfavorable opinion. (http://pollingreport.com/institut2.htm#Democrats.)

Yet, McCain currently holds small leads over each of the two Democratic nominees. Now, there are some other reasons for this. First of all, McCain is the one GOP candidate who appeals to independents; none of the others did. Furthermore, the Democrats are locked in long, bitter primary campaign, which is hurting each one in the general election. However, the biggest factor is the GOP propaganda machine, which is on the attack, and making sure that no one is paying attention to, you know, the pesky little “issues.”