Thanks to Sagra for linking to this in
this diary. Some of my commenters have recommended I crosspost this whole long beast of a thing here, so here goes:
Memo
To: Any Democratic politician who might, for whatever reason, want to stop listening to consultants whose main qualifications are (a) they know how to spend your money, and (b) they've been getting their asses kicked for the past 40 years.
From: Dr. Tom More, humble blogger
In Re: Karl Rove's "Battle Plan" for the 2006 elections, and what to do about it.
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Section One: Karl Rove's "Battle Plan"
- Terror, terror, terror.
- DIPSO (Damned Illegal Presidential Spying Operation) is vital, and only mimsy Democrats with a 9/10 mindset don't understand that.
- War in Iraq is a success.
- Tax cuts are good for everyone.
- Bush's judicial appointments are strong and mainstream.
- Corruption is not a Republican problem, it's a Washington problem
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Section Two: How to combat this plan:
1) Terror--Democrats need to come up with something scary of their own: I recommend Port Security, food and water supply security, and chemical/nuclear plant security. These have been major recommendations of every group that has studied the "post 9/11 world," and for many different reasons, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress has done nothing about them. Sometimes it's because they lack the money (tie in with tax cuts); sometimes it's because their corporate cronies tell them not to do anything about it (tie in with corruption); but mostly it's because of a lack of competence (tie in with Democratic Battle Plan point # 1, below). Being safe from terror starts at home, not in dubious wars abroad.
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- (a) DIPSO is illegal, and that matters (tie in with corruption). If the president decides he needs to use this power, he needs to come to Congress and request it, so that the elected representatives of the people have a chance to decide the matter. But the president didn't do this--instead he dismissed the express instructions of Congress and broke the law; when his crime was about to be exposed in 2004, he pressured newspaper editors not to run the story; when Senators and Representatives sought information about the program, the president and vice president lied to them about the program and the extent of the program.
- (b) The DIPSO is an expensive, misguided failure that costs billions of dollars and distracted countless agents and man-hours from the real business of fighting terrorism (tie in with incompetence).
- (c) The DIPSO is an unconstitutional infringement on people's right to be left alone by their government. Champions of the DIPSO will tell you that if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. We say, if you haven't done anything wrong you should be left alone to live your life without the threat of government agents snooping in your emails, your phone calls, your medical records, your income records, your associations, your religious beliefs and practices and affiliations, your work history, your community or political activities, or those of your family or children (tie in with individual freedom and shared responsibility--point # 7 of the Democratic Battle Plan, below).
- (c) (1) Do not use, under any further circumstances, the term "Big Brother"--I know you think it's cool to make literary references, but all it does is add to the impression of the Republicans as the party of authority, which Democrats should be trying to erode at every opportunity.
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- War in Iraq is an unmitigated failure (tie in with incompetence & smart, strong national defense, Democratic Battle Plan Point # 4, below). I know this is scary to most of you elected Democrats, but 2006 may very well be your last chance to get on the right side of this war, and the right side of history. After three years of this, with no end in sight, there are enough people out there who are ready to listen to an impassioned, direct, and sensible argument for why this war is a failure. Here's how you make such an argument.
- (a) Use the word "lie" to describe the thing that the president did when he talked about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iraq's connections to Al Qaeda, and the imminent threat Iraq posed the United States. If you voted for the war, and your opponent asked why, say, "I made the mistake of believing the president's lies. Why did you vote for it?" This will make your opponent defend his vote by trying to deny that the president lied--by summer of 2006, if the Democrats do their job (I know--big 'if'), that should not be a rhetorical position any Republican wants to be in.
- (a) (1) No public utterance of yours regarding the Iraq War should omit the word "lie" or its variant "lies"--not "obfuscation"; not "misleading"; not "didn't tell the truth"; not "willfully distorted"; not "didn't level with us"; not "dishonesty"; not "bamboozled" or anything else your paid consultants tell you to say. The word is "lie."
- (b) As enticing as it may be, don't get bogged down in discussing the incompetence of pre-war planning. Remember, your position is that this war was a bad thing, so trying to explain why it could have turned out to be a good thing only muddies the waters. Instead, keep all discussions of Iraq (except for the "lies" part) in the present tense--instead of dredging up the history of the war, talk about how bad things are there now. This reminds voters that this thing has no end in sight. Talk about it in a way that addresses both military and social concerns--we continue to read stories about torture: do you really want your children reading about that? we continue to hear about how the Iraqi people can't get basic services like electricity, clean water, safe food, medicine, pay, jobs--is this the legacy our soldiers are dying for in Iraq? we continue to hear about freedom and democracy, yet the new Iraqi government appears to be moving toward an alliance with Iran--is this what our soldiers died for, so that Iran could extend its influence in the Middle East? we continue to hear stories almost every day about more and more American soldiers being killed and wounded, more and more billions of dollars being spent--how long are we to put up with this? we continue to hear glowing assessments of the situation in Iraq from the president and the Republicans in Congress--but for how long are we going to go on believing these lies?
- (c) The war in Iraq has stretched our military too thin to deal with existing or emerging threats elsewhere, and has put an entire generation of military families into grave economic peril. Many of these people can't pay their mortgages, buy their children clothing, afford medical care, afford food, pay car notes, or credit card bills. And yet the administration and the Republican Congress continue to cut veterans' benefits, continue to extend the tours of servicemen and reservists, and still refuse to tell the American people when the troops can come home. How long will we continue to put up with this? How long before another enemy decides to test us? How long can we maintain a broken military? How can we continue to ask our military families to sacrifice so bravely while the rest of us sacrifice nothing?
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4) Taxes have been cut too much, especially for the richest Americans and for the corporate cronies of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. We see the results every day--the income gap between rich and poor, between rich and middle class, continues to grow exponentially; real wages for most Americans have been stagnant for the last six years, while rich people's incomes have skyrocketed; job growth, supposedly a boon of lower taxes, has been anemic under this president and this Congress; people's reliance on unaffordable credit continues to climb; badly needed services, the kind that give people a chance to better their lives, have been cut while military spending for the president's failed war in Iraq and war on terror continues to grow, and while Congress even votes to increase their salaries; the national debt and the trade deficit continue to grow, as this president and this Congress pay for the tax cuts they give rich people by passing the bill along to your children and grandchildren; the stock market has been stagnant during the Bush years, after tremendous growth during the 1990s, when we had a president from the party that actually knows how to run an economy. Say to the people, "The question is not, Are you better off now than you were six years ago--you aren't; the question is, What are you going to do about it? Continue to allow the president and the Congress to pass along the benefits of your hard work to rich people while passing along the bill to your children, or are you going to vote for the people who know what they're doing?"
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5) Bush's judicial appointments are another example of both his administration's incompetence and the fact that they are in the pocket of radical conservative groups that are outside the mainstream of American life. While everyone is telling you what a smart, qualified, and competent judge Sam Alito is, you should remember that the president's first choice for this seat was a woman named Harriet Miers, who had no judicial experience, no body of thought or writing on constitutional matters, and no qualifications for the bench at all except that, as she wrote, she thought the president was the "coolest commander-in-chief ever." When Ms. Mier's nomination was torpedoed by the radical right wing of the Republican Party, we saw the president give them a nominee they all loved--a nominee with a thirty-year record of hostility toward "one-person, one vote," toward workers' rights, toward women's rights, toward minority rights; a nominee who voted to allow a strip search of a ten-year-old girl; a nominee who believes that the president's powers are unlimited.
The president's appointments to the lower courts have been no less radical and outside the mainstream. We'll be dealing with the effects of this radical right shift for decades to come, and you should tell the people that the best thing to do about it now, before it gets worse, is to elect a Democratic president and Congress who will restore qualities like excellence, temperament, restraint, and common sense to the benches of America's courts, not more conservative ideological purity.
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- The modern-day Republican Party, with the president at its head, is run like an organized crime family, complete with bribes, corruption, graft, intimidation, a code of silence, and a hidden agenda. In the sordid tale of Jack Abramoff, the poster-boy for Republican corruption, there's even a murder involved. Tell the people: They do not have your best interests in mind, and they serve in government only to enrich themselves and the corporations and lobbyists that pay their way.
- (a) You want to get serious about government corruption, propose this: Any elected official or registered lobbyist or administrative employee found guilty of violating bribery, conspiracy, or corruption laws goes to jail for the rest of their lives. Government is a sacred trust, not a get-rich-quick scheme, and anyone who doesn't see it that way needs to be purged from public life, and the country needs to be permanently protected from such a person.
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Part Three: The Democratic Battle Plan:
- The Republicans are incompetent. We know what we're doing.
- The Republicans are corrupt.
- Leave Iraq Now.
- Smart, strong national defense and homeland security.
- Repairing alliances around the world.
- Investing in America's future.
- Personal freedom and shared responsibility.
- Don't be afraid.
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Part Four: How to implement the Democratic Battle Plan:
1) The Republicans are incompetent. We know what we're doing: See: Hurricane Katrina, the Medicare bill, the Social Security debacle, tax reform, the morbid performance of the economy, bin Laden still at large, Zawahri still at large, Iraq, No Child Left Behind, the DIPSO, etc., ad nauseum.
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- The Republicans are corrupt: See: Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Ralph Reed, Conrad Burns, Roy Blunt, etc., etc., etc.; see corruption and missing money in Iraq and no-bid contracts for the president's and the vice president's friends at Halliburton and KBR; see Abu Ghraib; see Plame, Valerie and Libby, Scooter; see, perhaps at some point, Rove, Karl; see the DIPSO; see cronyism (three McClellan brothers working in the White House; Grover Norquist's brother working at DHS; Harriet Miers; Mike Brown); see Joe Allbaugh; see the entire "pioneer" "trailblazer," "cowhand" whatever the fuck system of Republican fundraising; see the president doing everything in his power to block the 9/11 hearings, the Iraq Intelligence hearings, and torture hearings; see the president holding foreign nationals and American citizens indefinitely for supposed crimes the government can never seem to prosecute. Whatever the news of the day is, there should be some way for you, very simply, to tie it to Republican corruption. Do it.
- (a) Say this over and over again: We will never lie to you, we will never lie to you, we will never lie to you. Keep that promise.
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- Leave Iraq Now: I know, I know--it's irresponsible. Whatever. Say, We're very sorry to the Iraqi people to leave you in this mess, and as we repair our alliances throughout the world, we'll work with our allies, with NATO, and with the UN to mitigate the mess we made and to try to continue to do all we can to get basic services, infrastructure, and oil revenues flowing for you again. But we have come to the understanding that our presence in Iraq is only making things worse, and that the president has to be brought under control in these matters. We wish you the best.
- (a) Once in power, do everything you can--short of reintroducing troops--to keep the civil war from becoming a regional war. Pray.
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4) Smart, strong national defense and homeland security: The President's misguided war of lies has stretched our military to the breaking point, and we need to put serious money, time, and effort into repairing it, and readying it to meet the tasks of a new millennium. We need a smart, well funded military that truly honors its members' commitments instead of merely paying lip service to them; military facilities, equipment, training, personnel, supplies, services, and leadership should be the best in the world, and we need to put money and ideas into providing for military families who so willingly sacrifice their time, the possibility for other, more lucrative careers, and in some cases, their lives, for the good of our country and for the world. The Republicans seem content to use the military as background props for campaign appearances, that is when they aren't sending our troops off to a war based on lies where they can scare the American people into voting for them. When the Democrats are in charge again, that will stop, and American soldiers and their families can be assured that if we have to tell them to go to war, the threat is real, and that they will have the full support of their country and their government--in troops, in materiel, in money, in services, and in shared sacrifice.
We also know that the President and the Republicans in Congress have not done their job when it comes to Homeland Security. We need increased protections of our nation's ports right now; we need the ability to scan tanker boxes for weapons, for the parts for weapons, for weaponized germs and chemical weapons, and for nuclear material or weapons; we need the ability to track these imports as they move about the country on rail or by truck; we have the technology to do this, but the president and the Republican Congress have failed to order its implementation. They don't want to pay for it. We need to increase the safety of our food and water supply, and we have the technology to do it, but the president and the Republican Congress have failed to order its implementation--they'd rather cut taxes for rich people. We need to partner with our nation's energy plants, nuclear plants, and chemical plants to shore up their security and improve safety procedures--we have a plan to do this, the 9/11 commission outlined a plan to do this, but the president, the Republican Congress, and their cronies in these industries have refused to implement these plans--they don't want to pay for them.
It is vital that the Democrats are able to force these kinds of badly needed changes into law--they're very good ideas, but until we can take action on them to keep Americans safe, the Republicans will continue to stall on these vital recommendations, instead diverting attention away from these very real and very serious threats to imagined threats of "mushroom clouds," threats that the administration knew were lies when they first started making them. We need a government that believes that Homeland Security is a priority, not just a place to stick campaign contributors and provide the illusion of doing things to keep Americans safe.
Do smart strong national defense and homeland security cost money? Yes. But we've seen for six years now the result of the president and the Republican Congress trying to do it on the cheap. It doesn't work--if you want to be safe, it will cost money.
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5) Repairing alliances around the world: One of the most shameful episodes of the Bush presidency and the Republican control of Congress was the way they savaged nations like the French for refusing to turn over their military to us to use in a war based on lies in Iraq. Now, as we all know, it turns out the French were right in their basic objections to the US invasion--Iraq was not an imminent threat, sanctions were working to contain and diminish Saddam's ability to hurt his citizens and neighbors, and Iraq has become precisely the quagmire the French and other countries predicted.
The French, and other nations we've alienated since the Bush presidency and the war on terror began, have been America's staunchest allies since our nation was in its infancy. We have an unprecedented opportunity, in the post-colonial world, to form new alliances that can help us grow as a nation, to grow our economy, and to improve the odds of winning the war on terror. But we're letting both those new opportunities and those old alliances slip away from us because the Bush administration and the Republican Congress refuse to brook the possibility that other people might have good ideas. Because this president and this Republican Congress are insecure about their dealings with other countries, America is becoming increasingly isolated at exactly the point in history that the world is becoming more and more interconnected. This interconnectedness, and the Republican fear of it, is inhibiting our ability to fight terrorism, yes, but is also inhibiting our ability to reduce the factors that cause terrorism in the first place--resentment, poverty, xenophobia, fear, misunderstanding. On top of all of that, it's reducing our ability to get the most out of this interconnectedness economically. Nations around the world are starting to wonder whether or not they can trust us, and so the cycle of insecurity grows and widens.
America should be a leader in the world, not a country that seeks to isolate itself from the world. When Democrats run things again, we'll set about repairing these alliances and forging new ones, both on a nation-to-nation level and a person-to-person level. Americans used to be welcome guests in almost any nation on the planet--today, Americans travelling abroad are greeted with resentment, at best, and threats of violence and cruelty at worst. Democrats believe that our people, our individual citizens and their talents, gifts, and abilities, are this country's greatest export and the greatest advertisement for our way of doing things, and we want to create intergovernmental alliances that foster all nations' abilities to prosper from their dealings with us.
5) (a) Get comfortable with the following phrase: "Republicans will tell you that we want to give other countries veto power over our national defense. Don't believe it--it's just another lie."
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6) Investing in America's future: America is at a critical moment in its progress as a nation. Republicans have decided that Americans care more about the now than the future--this is why they continue to irresponsibly cut taxes and pass the bill on to future generations, why they propose doing away with social security, and why they have done nothing--not one single, solitary thing--to improve the nation's infrastructure, technological capabilities, education system, or health care system.
We Democrats believe that government can help create the conditions that lead to a successful future for us and for succeeding generations. We propose the following:
- (a) A national service program for construction of new roads, bridges, highways, and rail systems, including intra-city rail and high-speed rail; for improvements to our homeland security needs; for repair and renovation of existing infrastructure, including improvements to make air travel both safer and more efficient; for support of other projects run by other governmental entities on the state, county, and local levels.
- (b) A genuine investment in our nation's technological capabilities. It's remarkable that the US has managed to become the leader in technological innovation with as little government support as it has gotten. We need to invest public monies in making sure that everyone in America has access to broadband internet technology; we need a serious investment in finding and producing alternative fuels and alternative transportations that do not rely so heavily on foreign oil; we need a serious investment in the promising new medical treatments offered by biotechnology and stem-cell research; we need a serious investment (and strong alliances) to act now on global warming; and we need a serious investment in exporting these new technologies and sharing our discoveries with the world.
- (c) We need to make a serious investment in improving our nation's education system. No Child Left Behind is just one more failed Republican program that doesn't do anything to address the issues affecting education in this country today. We need a new investment in paying teachers a proper salary for their work, because then better, smarter people will want to become teachers; we need an investment in school infrastructure, to repair dilapidated buildings, to increase classroom space, and to make sure that all students in America, not just those in wealthy suburban districts, have the books, technology, materials, and physical comfort and safety required to learn; and we need a new national emphasis on education in this country, leaders who take education seriously rather than brag about their C-student past like it was some kind of badge of honor. America's students need to understand the stakes of their educations in a changing, developing world.
- (d) It's time for every American to have access to health care that is affordable, accessible, and the best in the world. The current system of employer-based health insurance leaves too many Americans underinsured or uninsured, and it creates a drag on the economy in the form of higher prices for manufactured goods and exports, in bureaucratic inefficiency, and in delays in treatment for diseases that become more expensive if treatment is delayed. The current system also creates an undue and unhealthy level of stress on the average American citizen.
Most corporations are ready to endorse nationalized health care, most doctors spend entirely too much of their time dealing with the broken system to devote their full attention to their patients, and most Americans know that health care is a right that all Americans should have. But the Bush administration and the Republican Congress and their friends in the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries don't want it because they're afraid such a system would eat into their profits, so they'll say a bunch of scary, emotional things that you, as Democrats, have to be able to counter, on both an intellectual and emotional level.
6) (d) (1) In other words, start getting comfortable with this line: "They're just trying to scare you again."
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- Personal freedom and shared responsibility: Republicans and President Bush say that they believe in small government, but what they really believe in is authoritarian government, a Daddy government that runs the lives of its citizens through coercion and fear. Learn to counter this by promoting the Democrats' vision of American citizens as responsible adults who know what's best for them and their families. Point out that Republican-style Daddy government is exactly what the Founders were on the lookout for when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Point out that Democrats expect the nation's citizens to take responsibility for running their country, and that Democrats will re-open America's public discourse to all voices, not just the well-connected voices of a rich and chosen few.
- (a) Remind Americans too that we are a nation that is at our best when we work together. If you happen to be a religious person, you might remind voters that we are our brothers' keepers; if you aren't, remind Americans that at times of real peril to our nation, we have always worked together, sacrificed, and overcome whatever obstacles history or the world had thrown in our way. Remind voters that we face such obstacles now, not only from the new threats of terrorism (although you should certainly mention these), but from the Republican governing philosophy that says that we should turn our backs on the world and huddle in fear, that says that government is bad (it certainly is when they run it), that, through allowing corporations to set the terms of commercial, financial and public life, sets us as individual citizens in direct competition with one another, that contributes to the coarsening of the culture by constantly finding and manufacturing new enemies to fight, that doesn't believe a person has a right to choose what happens to their bodies, that seeks to coerce affirmation of its policies by stifling discourse and intimidating dissent.
Democrats, on the other hand, believe that we are at our best when we work together; when our differences give us the opportunity to arrive at a new consensus through open, frank discussion; when people feel free to dissent; when people feel that they have a stake in one another's progress, success, and happiness. We believe that smart government can go a long way toward creating those more fruitful and productive conditions, and that no law-abiding citizen should ever feel fear of their government or any of its agents. Benjamin Franklin said that if we don't hang together, we will all hang separately. We stand today on the threshold of a new global revolution, where the power of ideas, technology and human beings will make the world new again, and we can join together in leading that revolution, or we can be left behind by it.
7) (c) Does "shared sacrifice" mean raising taxes? Yes--get used to explaining, in plain, simple English, a simple cost-benefit analysis.
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8) Do not be afraid: For forty years, from Nixon's racist "Southern Strategy" to Reagan and Bush I's War on Drugs to the Dancing Threat-Level Meter of the Bush administration, Republicans have dominated national politics by convincing people to be afraid, all the time, of something. If it's not communists its terrorists; if it's not higher taxes it's Harry and Louise; if it's not crack babies it's welfare mothers. And for far too long, Democrats, who, with their inherent belief in the power of government should be the party of bravery and hope ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," etc.), for far too long Democrats have played right into their hands by (1) echoing these fears, and (2) being afraid of Republicans.
It's not working, and it can't go on any longer, especially now, when you have an electorate ready to listen to a hopeful message that says we can overcome anything, and that there is no reason to fear. Fear paralyzes Republicans (reference Katrina; ref. "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US"; ref. Tora Bora; ref. "Stay the course"; etc.); Democrats are willing to do the hard work necessary to take on these threats, and we believe the power of our ideas and the energy of our efforts will prevail.
So stop being afraid, and tell Americans to stop being afraid. Again, say this over and over: "They're just trying to scare you."
When Republicans attack--and they will; it's all they know how to do--attack back by advancing YOUR argument, not responding to theirs! This will keep you in charge of the rhetorical, intellectual, and moral terms of the debate (aka, "framing"; maybe you've heard of it), because Republicans don't have any ideas of their own with which to counter. They just repeat themselves all the time--they call this "staying on message," and you've been so afraid of the imagined (but unexamined) power of that nonsense for so long that you've let it impinge on the single greatest natural advantage Democratic politics has over Republican politics--the power of ideas.
8) (a) Tell the people this: "There are real threats--we'll face them together. There are real opportunities--we'll explore them together. There are people out there who tell you to be afraid--be afraid of them."
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I would be more than happy to fly to Washington or to your home district at your expense to discuss these matters in more detail. Since I've never actually run a campaign before (read "lost a campaign before") I work relatively cheap.
Sincerely, etc.,
Dr. Tom More
The MOQUOL--I Can Save You, America!