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Conflict Politics

Preempt the preemptor.

Do you feel safer with Bush in the White House?

Yesterday’s Boston Globe brings us the Republicans’ strategy for re-electing Bush:

Faced with growing public uneasiness over Iraq, Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year’s election by focusing on the “doctrine of preemption,” portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas.

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of “protests, pessimism and political hate speech,” Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials — a move designed to shift attention toward Bush’s broader foreign policy objectives rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted — and perhaps unpatriotic — to protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The president’s critics are adopting a policy that will make us more vulnerable in a dangerous world,” Gillespie wrote. “Specifically, they now reject the policy of pre-emptive self-defense and would return us to a policy of reacting to terrorism in its aftermath.”

Do you feel safer with Bush in the White House? I’ve signed up for the Boston-area Wesley Clark MeetUp in December — hope to see you there! I’d love to watch the president try to paint General Clark as a “protest, pessimism, and political hate speech” kind of guy.