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The National Guard Association honors one of their own
The National Guard Association of the United States yesterday unveiled a bust of a young Lt. George W. Bush. The association expressed its pride in Bush, who is perhaps its most famous alumnus around today.That's from the Washington Post coverage; a four-paragraph note, two of which are devoted to re-hashing the "AWOL" canard that failed so utterly in 2004. (ahem*rathergate*ahem). Like John Kerry's "war hero" status, a miscalculation by a party that demonstrably doesn't "get it" on military issues.
But...
You'll likely be hearing a lot about this:
Military veterans as politicians are an American tradition.However,Anyone hoping to win office after World War II had to have a military background; Dwight Eisenhower won easily.
But Veterans for a Secure America, a new organization that will meet this week in Washington, D.C., to jump-start its 2006 electoral efforts, is nontraditional. Its candidates, including local congressional hopeful Jay Fawcett, are Democrats unhappy with the Iraq war, and they want to use their status to make changes.
Although the group’s candidates — 54 and growing — are members of the minority party, they are not by-the-book Democrats.
“I don’t think you’ll find within our group a whole bunch of support for the Nancy Pelosis of the party,” Fawcett said of the House minority leader. “We’re more straight-ahead, let’s-get-thingsdone guys.”
Democrats typically use the case study of Paul Hackett (an Iraqi war veteran who narrowly lost a Congressional special election to Jean Schmidt) as evidence that their military candidates can win elections, but only time (specifically, about nine more months) will tell whether that's actually true or not. Helen Seliverstov, a political analyst for the web-based CalRaces blog, examines the seven "Band of Brothers 2006 PAC" California candidates running in the six Congressional races (including two-- Jim Brandt for the 46th and John Graham for the 48th-- in my native Orange County) and notes one strong trend: all are running in heavily Republican districts -- the average voter registration is 46% (R) to 31% (D), a fifteen-point average margin of advantage for their opponents. Seliverstov concludes:That's from an excellent and comprehensive essay on the topic from milblogger Bobby Bran. Read it all.Not a single one of those districts is held by Democrats or has any chance of switching Parties due to the registration gap. This makes every one of these veterans look like sacrificial lamb candidates. I can understand this being a strategy of draining funds from Republicans, but that’s a funny way to respect those who have served their country. In California, if Democrats really wanted to have a veteran elected to office, there are plenty of safe Democrat Congressional seats that candidates could be recruited for. This is hypocrisy at its best.
