Anti-war Republicans: A Telling Shift in Allegianceby Eileen McNamara, Boston.com
NEW LONDON, N.H. -- Hilary Cleveland felt a tad the traitor on Friday evening, as she prepared to toss fruit in the porcelain bowl from China that was a gift from Barbara and George H.W. Bush. Hours before, she had taken the helm of the GOP Women for Kerry Steering Committee in this battleground state.
In truth, she left the Republican Party months ago, her opposition to the war in Iraq prompting her to change her life-long political affiliation from Republican to "undeclared." It was not an idle move for a Republican stalwart, the widow of James Colgate Cleveland, a 10-term congressman who was the senior Bush's regular paddleball partner when both served in the US House of Representatives. Cleveland died in 1995.
"George and Barbara are very dear friends. But this war, so wrong to begin with, is destroying the image of America as a peace-loving country in the world," she said. "I know the pResident would say that he is 'liberating' Iraq but I don't think that Iraqis who don't have running water, electricity, a job, or safety on their streets would agree with him. It's fair to say he has disappointed me."
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Basu: Fear, Politics and God's Voteby Rekha Basu, Des Moines Register
The vice pResident warns of a terrorist attack if a Democrat is elected president.
The co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, Leon Mosley, says his is the official party of G-d.
Illinois' Republican candidate for Senate, Alan Keyes, says Jesus wouldn't vote for his Democratic opponent, and calls Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter a selfish hedonist and sinner.
New York's former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, describes how, in the city's darkest moments of Sept. 11, 2001, he grabbed the arm of the police commissioner and said, "Thank G-d George Bush is our pResident."
There is nothing these Republicans won't politicize to win elections: a national tragedy, people's personal lives, even God.
At its cleanest, politics is dirty business. It was during the Democratic primaries, and it has been in every presidential election. Demonizing opponents seems to work at undermining their credibility in the public eye.
But there's a quantum leap between subjecting someone's record to scrutiny and exploiting for political gain the most traumatizing event ever on American soil. As the third anniversary of Sept. 11 passes this weekend, Americans are still raw from the wounds being mined for political gain.
Cheney crossed the line Tuesday, and he chose Des Moines to do it in. Campaigning at the Embassy Suites, he said, "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today on Nov. 2 we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again."
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Moderate Republicans Say Cheney’s Remarks Undermine DemocracyeMediaWire
Members of Republicans for Kerry are outraged by Dick Cheney’s remark in Iowa [last week], and they believe that it is an intentional attempt to create fear among Americans to undermine the democratic process of this national election.
Mesa, Arizona - Harry Wettig, a life-long Republican and retired public servant of 34 years who served in the Army Air Corps as a twin engine pilot in WW II, is outraged by Vice pResident Cheney's remarks [last week] in Iowa. Wettig says, "Dick Cheney made the ultimate threat to the American people when he said, 'If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.'" In Wettig's view Cheney was really saying, "If you don't vote for George and me, it is your fault when you get hit by the terrorists again."
Wettig asks, "Mr. Vice pResident, how much more terror can you hope to inspire? Your remark is trying to undermine the democratic system of this country. It is clearly un-American." Wettig operates the website "RepublicansAgainstBush.info" that has been tracking Bush administration actions and policies on issues important to moderate Republicans, including security. He believes that there is nothing in the Department of Homeland Security's current plans, or in the words of Bush or Cheney to make the American people feel any safer. “All we hear from them is that the level of terror for today is ‘orange.’ That is not protection”
Rich Fletcher, of Durango, CO, who calls himself “another Republican for common sense,” agrees with Wettig. “Imagine the temerity of two draft-dodgers calling their Vietnam veteran opponent a threat to national security!” Fletcher believes that the writings of White House insiders like Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill show that in the period leading up to the 9-11 attacks, the administration’s attention was focused mainly on planning a Cold War-style strategic missile program, and as a result terrorists slipped past them. “Then when Mr. Bush used 9-11 as an excuse to launch America’s first unprovoked attack - against a nation that hadn’t had a hand in 9-11 and was under intense surveillance and inspections - he generated unprecedented hatred in the world toward the United States,” Fletcher suggests. “Did that decision make us safer?”
”Today I'm fighting to see that the Bush-Cheney ticket doesn't win on its second attempt,“ says Fletcher. “I'm deeply concerned about the current direction and lack of ethics represented by Bush-Cheney. As far as I can tell, they have no moral compass and absolutely no shame….True Republicans would never set out, as they have, to dismantle the very republic after which our party is named.”
Echoing the sentiments of many Republicans for Kerry, Wettig concludes in a recent essay, “We live in terror not because of any threat from the hard-working Muslim family down the block, but from the terror-mongering of the Bush-Cheney camp. Never before have the words of Franklin Roosevelt, a Democratic President but one who cared deeply about the average American, rung so true to the moderate Republicans of this country: ‘Our greatest fear is fear itself.’ I hope the nation shows Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush that they can’t threaten their way into another disastrous four years.”
(Source)
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