This is a letter I sent this morning to the Talking Points Memo about an open question about why the GOP is steadily falling in the polls. The question, basically put, is "Is it all Foley?":
Dear Josh,
I would say that the paradigm shift you describe (without calling it that, poor Kuhn has been abused by too many to risk even an accurate reference), that the country has said 'enough' started in earnest with Katrina.
The whole episode showed that Homeland Security was a farce and that the GOP activity does not care about people. The fact that Bush ignored Sheehan helped set that context. Then came Miers, to show the GOP core that Bush doesn't even know he has lost credibility. Then the Iraq war kept getting worse and worse and more communinties across America were losing native children. Then major players of a distinct Republican identity - the heads of military - were almost unanimously against the conduct of the war. Then the public break of GOP Senators over the torture bill (John McCain! John "Elizabeth Taylor" Warner!) made it clearer.
None of the real substance - the stuff we who read newspapers/internet know about - mattered. Torture, habeas corpus, NIE reports are either too detailed or easily spun. Even the massive corruption scandals of Abrahamoff, DeLay, Cunningham, Ney are either 'business as usual' (corrupt politicians? i'm shocked, shocked) or in someone else's backyard.
I think the Foley case and North Korea coming almost simultaneously were the one-two punch that finally made people snap (as you described it). Basically because both are Katrina, one domestic, one foreign. North Korea getting the bomb is absurd in light of the war in Iraq. Most people in America felt that we had to go in because Saddam Hussein, after killing James Bond, deployed the planes that destroyed the WTC and that was only the beginning. The WMD were ready to be aimed at us. Because we didnt find any doesn't mean they didn't exist, just like there still can be Dragons over the lip of the flat earth. But when one of the Axis of Evil countries actually develops WMD while we just sit and mumble destroys whatever credibility was left about the rectitude of attacking Iraq. It's thank God not as bad as another attack on US soil, but its almost the same thing rhetorically.
Then Foley. Which shows that, like Katrina, the GOP just doesn't care about people. The wonderful denials, the blaming of Democrats, the belief that the creepy IMs didnt look troubling, the fact that Foley has repeatedly shown up drunk at the Page dorms - these things hit home.
And, to again use the paradigm-shift theory, because the Catholic church scandals of the past few years have already prepared people's opinions on the matter, people instantly knew what to think when Foleygate hit. Everyone except die-hards attacked the Catholic Church hierarchy; how could they ignore the abuse etc. This is why Foley's actions are considered so bad (even though it wasn't near the levels of the priests') - because we already knew what this was.
Lastly, Foleygate shows the hypocracy of the GOP gay-bashing to the Christianist Fundamentalists. The Christianists all believe that gay men prey on young boys. They didn't know that the GOP leaders (Hastert, Santorum) had openly gay chiefs-of-staff. That, I believe, is the real snapping point. To use a crude metaphor it's as if Strom Thurmond in 1948 had a black chief-of-staff [when he ran for President as the anti-segregationist 'Dixiecrat' party]
However, all my wonderful analysis is moot because who cares what the majority of people think. Its all GOTV and Karl Rove is the world's master. It reminds me of how badly I do at predicting the Oscars; I base my predictions on what I think deserves an award and the Oscar goes to whomever receives the most votes. And I have no idea who is in the Academy nor how those people think. Adrien Brody? Roman 'Pederast' Polanksi?!
As we saw in 2004, Rove managed to find enough people - people who had not been responding to pre-polling - to get their tushes in the voting booth. So all the outrage, and the poll numbers, all the scandals mean nothing if we don't know who Rove has managed to connive into voting this year. And what is most frustrating is that Rove is 100% correct - who cares about the issues if all that matters is getting enough votes in one 18 hour period on one day in history.
My 25 cents.
All the best,
[The Styx]
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