Daily Kos

Republicans: Abusers? A Way to Frame?

Wed Jan 18, 2006 at 07:57:26 AM PDT

We have two specific cases where Republicans are definitely caught disrepecting (to put it mildly) groups of people they supposedly support. Are there other cases, and can Democrats make this a major talking point?
As most of you know now, Murtha is the latest veteran to be swift-boated. A great editorial by James Webb is in the NY Times and other bloggers are on this. This is another example of how Republicans use members of the military and veterans - with grand words of how much they respect and support the military, when in fact they have no respect at all.

A second case is Michael Scanlon's email about "religious wackos":

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

Again most all of you know about this, but here is an example of how Republicans' supposed support and respect for religion is just a ruse to get them to vote for Republican candidates.

I think this is a major issue:

A. Republicans are using the military as pawns in a political game, promising them support and respect but in fact only interested in their votes, and little else. And our examples are McCain, Cleland, Kerry, and Murtha. (More examples?)

B. Republicans are using the faithful as pawns in a political game, promising them support and respect but in fact only interested in their votes, and little else. And our example is Scanlon. (More examples?)

Are there other institutions that the Republicans are using this way? And do we have examples? And can we make this a major campaign issue?

For example, Republicans are supposedly "pro business" but I think we Democrats know that is code for "pro CEO's". Can we come up with examples to prove this? Does the Republican stance against national health insurance directly hurt businesses who have to bear that burden? I think so. Anything else?

Curious about your ideas.

Tags: republicans, military, religion, John Murtha, Swift Boat, John Kerry, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, framing (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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