John Kerry didn’t do it last week. Last night, John Edwards didn’t do it.
President Bush and VP Cheney keep telling the voters they are strong and will protect Americans better than the Democratic ticket.
So why not ask, "The way you protected us September 11, 2001? After you got a CIA briefing telling you that Osama bin Laden planned to attack on American soil?"
The Republicans would retort, of course, by blaming Bill Clinton for failing to stop terrorism. Still, the rebuttal to that is obvious – namely, that Ronald Reagan set the pattern for the US response to terror when he cut and ran after terrorists killed 241 Marines in Lebanon. Nor did the first President Bush face up to bin Laden. In a continuing debate, the Democrats could quote Bush and Cheney and the others from Bob Woodward’s books or Richard Clarke to establish that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq from the start and gave al Qaeda short shrift. Heck, they might even point out that Attorney General Ashcroft sought to cut intelligence funds shortly before 9/11.
So why don’t the Democrats – assaulted by lying liars - go for the jugular? Basically, it’s that in 2004 liberalism is floundering and liberals lack conviction.