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Osama's Double Dog Dare

The punch line of a politician's joke makes a perfect sound bite. Sen. Kerry, as an experienced politician, crafts his speeches so that sympathetic editors will pick out the good sounding sound bites for the news services. He has no one to blame but himself when the hostile camp picks up on a line which, when taken out of context, can be made to sound bad. The Senator should be an irrelevancy this fall, but he played into the Republicans' (desperate) hands. In the end I think all it will cost the Democrats is tempo, but in a chess game tempo can be all important.

Speaking of Republicans, I received in the mail yesterday (3 November) a mailing from the Indiana Republican Party with Osama's face gracing the cover and the caption:
"He thinks one more attack might break our will.
"He thinks we aren't tough enough to stick it out . . ."
Gee, Osama has double dog dared me to vote Republican.

The Indiana GOP ought to get real. The flyer, if you read the finer print, has to do with the Congressional elections, but the Indiana GOP obviously thinks that this logic should spread all the way down the ticket. What does bin Laden have to do with our State elections?

In Washington the RNC is telling its Congressional candidates to run on local issues. In Indiana the Republicans are running away from local issues (as evidenced by this flyer and the recent initiative by state legislative leaders on illegal immigration, a federal issue if ever there was one). There is a certain irony in a political party telling us we need to "tough it out" when the federal branch of the party wants to "localize" the elections and the state branch wants to "nationalize" them. I guess "toughing it out" is for us, not them.

The Republicans this fall just don't want to talk about their record. Can't say I blame them. Now, where were they, oh yes, Sen. Kerry. . .