The Stupid Party is Living Up to their Label - Three questions Republicans should be asking voters

With all of the hype and hubbub leading into the November elections, the old saw about there being two political parties in the U.S., the Stupid party and the Evil Party, is playing out in spades. With the voter backlash against vacillating, ineffective, and corrupt Republicans, there are three simple questions Republicans should be asking voters: What would the Democrats have done? What will the Democrats do? Would the U.S. be better off under Democrat control? Instead of focusing on those questions, Republicans are ignoring them in favor of fear-mongering and attack ads.

Voters are clearly unhappy with much of the Republicans’ performance over the past six years – and with good reason – but do Americans truly believe the Democrats could have done, or will do better? Do Republican strategists think the Democrats have offered any viable alternative to Republican stupidity? In a year when voters are clearly inclined to vote against Republicans, no one is pointing out that a vote against the Republicans is a vote for the Democrats.

Anger and frustration about the war in Iraq, the bloated budget, the illegal immigration stalemate, gasoline prices, and political corruption has voters poised to take the reins of the country away from the Republicans, but that means handing them back over to the Democrats, and Americans need to ask themselves what the situation would be if Democrats had been in control over the past six years.

When those planes flew into the World Trade Center there were few in this country who didn’t breathe a sigh of relief that George W. Bush was the President rather than Al Gore. When the Taliban refused to dismantle terrorist training camps, turn over known terrorists, and relinquish control of the Afghan government, Democrats insisted that attacking Afghanistan would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and would drag out for decades. The war was over in a matter of weeks and clean-up and reconstruction operations have been more successful than even the most optimistic predictions.

What would the Democrats have done?

When Saddam Hussein refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to do their job, violated U.N. mandates, thumbed his nose and made serious threats against the U.S. and international critics, the President of the United States drew a “line in the sand” and made a promise. The U.S. Congress supported the President in delivering that ultimatum and gave him the authority to back up his promise with force if necessary. When the deadline hit, the President took swift and sure action; he kept his promise.

What would the Democrats have done?

Naysayers immediately began second-guessing those actions. Again we were told that this war was going to cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. lives and take years to win. Again, U.S. troops swept over the country so quickly that their biggest problem turned out to be keeping up with their own front lines. The “War” was won in a matter of weeks and the battle to restore order and rebuild the country began.

What would the Democrats have done?

Insurgents and terrorist groups rallied to Iraq for the opportunity to strike at Americans and a new war, a sneaky war of radical, fundamentalist hate-mongers, began in Iraq. The President and Republicans held firm; resisted calls for withdrawal, continued to support the burgeoning new Iraqi government, and training a new Iraqi army to take control of a stable and functional nation. Each milestone has been met and surpassed. Each commitment has been fulfilled. Each promise has been kept.

What would the Democrats have done?

Now, the turmoil in Iraq continues but the Iraqi government and military are nearing the point of self-sustainability. Free elections have been held. Iraqi citizens by the tens of thousands have repeatedly risked their lives to participate in the democratic process. Resistance, which continues to become more sophisticated and concentrated – and therefore more effective- also continues to shrink and be destroyed by U.S. and Iraqi military units which are clearly winning this nefarious war of attrition.

What would the Democrats do?

In the rest of the world, Iran is rejecting diplomatic solutions and continues to seek nuclear weapons capability while arming and supporting the terrorists in Iraq and calling for the destruction of Israel. The respect and restraint demonstrated by the Iranian government shortly after the invasion of Iraq has been completely dispelled by the Democrats reassurances that they will never allow the President to take such brash, “cowboy” actions again. Their insistence that American’s “didn’t have the stomach” for a drawn out struggle and attacks on the integrity of the President have emboldened the Iranian government to escalate their nuclear program, ignore U.N. appeals and sanction threats, and suppress the growing dissident factions within their population.

By undermining the President’s ability to make credible threats of military action, Democrats succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and propping up a regime which had appeared to be on the verge of collapsing.

North Korea too was taken aback by the strong U.S. response in Iraq and backed away from their aggressive and threatening positions. After years of refusals, Kim Jong Il suddenly became amenable to the idea of multilateral talks with neighboring states. The border with South Korea was relaxed to an unprecedented level and the scent of freedom began wafting into the country, stirring the people. As with Iran, these positive developments were suddenly reversed once Democrats made it clear that the President would not be able to back diplomacy with any credible threat of military action. Once that threat was effectively removed from the equation, North Korea’s “Bamboo Curtain” came crashing closed once more, the country redoubled its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and became even more intransigent and belligerent.

Democrats have suggested a return to the Clinton policy under which North Korea stopped making overt threats toward its neighbors, and received millions of dollars in U.S. aid while publicly promising not to expand their nuclear capabilities. The fact that North Korea was using much of the U.S. aid to fund secret expansion of their nuclear program seems to be of little importance to the Democrats.

Luckily, impulsive lunatic dictator Muammar Qaddafi felt the heat and saw the light fairly quickly and chose to voluntarily surrender his illegal weapons programs before Democrats had a chance to convince him that the U.S. was not really any threat to him. What could we expect from him, or any of the other tyrants in the world, under the watchful eyes of a Democrat controlled Congress?

So we’re back to the original three questions: What would the Democrats have done?

What will the Democrats do?

Would the U.S. be better off under Democrat control?