Ezra Klein: Running on Katrina, not Wiretapping

« My Pet Wingnut Bites | Main | Edwards, Civil Liberties, and Abortion »

February 17, 2006

Running on Katrina, not Wiretapping

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Via Political Wire, a new Marist Poll shows that the Bush response to Katrina upsets a significantly larger percentage of the public than the warrantless wiretapping story. As the election approaches, blogospheric activity will become more and more expressly political. It's important to remember that one of these issues involves abstract questions of the Constitutional that affect the government's ability to bother a small number of people, while the other involves the government's ability to perform its basic duty to keep people alive. It shouldn't be surprising that disaster response is a bigger story.

February 17, 2006 in Elections | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c572d53ef00d834255fbf53ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Running on Katrina, not Wiretapping:

» jeiylc from forajoeitk
iutbdgvxpd [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 13, 2006 5:17:30 PM

Comments

Just like the "Bush Lied!" campaign, this will not be a winner for Democrats.

The fact is that local leadership was the worst failure. If Mayor Nagin (D) had used those thousands of buses to evacuate the poor from New Orleans, or if Governor Blanco (D) had accepted the offer for help immediately from the federal gov't, Katrina would not have been nearly as bad. An excellent way to demonstrate that, look at how Mississippi, Alabama and Texas handled Katrina (under Republican leadership) compared to Louisiana and how Texas handled Hurricane Rita.

Remember how "Bush Lied!" was gaining momentum until Bush and Republicans started putting out the same "lies" told by Democratic leaders? Then the "Bush Lied!" argument died because if Bush lied, the Democrats told worse lies.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002,

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

Also, it will be federal Democrat congressmen blaming the federal gov't for the response. They were congressman before Katrina hit, why didn't they foresee the coming disaster? Democrats say Bush is so stupid he can't find his asshole, but he was supposed to foresee the disaster?

When the time comes, the Republicans will start putting the facts out there and that will end the Katrina campaign.

But hey, the Left still has the Shiavo story to campaign on.

Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 17, 2006 1:54:53 PM

it's dereliction of duty.

Posted by: daveminnj | Feb 17, 2006 2:55:20 PM

the government's ability to bother a small number of people

Not if it's TIA, then it's the government's ability to spy on all of us. It sure sounds like they have several domestic spy programs going on and not just the one involving people with possible connections to al Qaeda. Remember too that the FBI said alot of these connections were calls to Pizza Hut and the like that they were investigating, is this where we want our homeland security dollars going, investigating Pizza delivery calls?

Posted by: Donna | Feb 17, 2006 3:01:33 PM

One problem here is that Bush Administration bureaucrats at FEMA are the major targets of Katrina wrath. I'm not sure how this affects congressmen.

It's also kind of annoying that corruption issues were described as the "Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal." Referring to "Corruption in Congress" or some such may have given more useful results, and I'm guessing they'd be higher.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Feb 17, 2006 3:04:31 PM

The Republicans don't expect the coming election to be very good to them. After the pep-rally retreat the GOP had for themselves last week, two more GOP congressmen came home and announced that they were retiring. So six incumbent GOP congressmen have announced so far that they are leaving politics altogether, not even counting disgraced Duke Cunningham. A few other GOPs are leaving congress to run for governorships and other things. They expect to next election to be expensive, exhausting and ugly for them and already a few are giving up.

Posted by: sprocket | Feb 17, 2006 3:31:41 PM

It's important to remember that one of these issues involves abstract questions of the Constitutional that affect the government's ability to bother a small number of people, while the other involves the government's ability to perform its basic duty to keep people alive.

So... "It's not about ideology, it's about competence" ? You may be right about which issue resonates more, but don't you think it needs to be posed within an ideological framework? "We believe in what Republicans believe in, but we're not incompetent idiots" might both be (a) true, (b) better for the country than what we have now, but is anyone going to vote for it?

Posted by: Constantine | Feb 17, 2006 4:20:41 PM

Constantine, I don't think the Katrina issue needs to be framed as one of competence. It's more like "We care about the poor and suffering, they don't." All the incompetence stuff figures into the story of how they don't care.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Feb 17, 2006 4:53:59 PM

Bush watched as an American city died and did nothing. It's nearly 6 months later and they still haven't cleaned the streets, never mind rebuilding the city and bringing back the homeless. Even a jaded opportunist would've gone into action to revive the city, if only to claim credit as a savior (The way Bush did in Florida after the Hurricanes of 2004, when his reelection was in doubt.)

Posted by: Dom | Feb 17, 2006 8:51:07 PM

仓储笼
 仓储笼
 折叠式仓储笼
 仓库笼
 南京仓储笼
 上海仓储笼
 北京仓储笼
 广州仓储笼
 杭州仓储笼