OAKLAND, California - In the final days before the November 7 elections in the
US, Bush administration surrogates have taken to asking whomever they are
conversing with about the Iraq war, "Do you want us to win in Iraq?"
As the US death toll in Iraq for the month of October passed 100 - making it
the deadliest month in nearly two years - and with polls still showing that the
Democratic Party is poised to take control of the House of Representatives and
possibly the Senate, Republican Party message-meisters appear to have devised
what
they hope will be the money sound-bite for electoral victory.
Whether it is the brainchild of Frank Luntz, the pollster and longtime
Republican messaging guru, or an idea that emanated from the offices of
President George W Bush's top adviser Karl Rove or Ken Mehlman, the chairman of
the Republican National Committee, the "do you want us to win?" slogan is
clearly aimed at challenging the patriotism of critics of the war in Iraq.
"It's a good frame for the GOP [Republican Party] to roll out in these last few
days before the election," said Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild
Wilderness, an Oregon-based environmental group. "The Bush administration has
established a frame that is shorthand for saying you can either stay the course
in Iraq and win - or lose.
"Since the 'stay the course' sound-bite was recently abandoned by the White
House and is no longer the accepted frame, it makes sense that a replacement
had to be found. And besides, the old frame no longer worked because staying
the course has now been conclusively proved to be a failed concept and the
frame itself is no longer effective," said Silver.
Within the same 24-hour period, both Lynne Cheney, the wife of vice president
Dick Cheney, and Bill O'Reilly, the host of the highly rated - for cable
television - Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor, used the
question in separate interviews.
Cheney not only used the question, she also challenged the patriotism of CNN
and veteran journalist Wolf Blitzer. During Cheney's appearance on Blitzer's
CNN show The Situation Room last Friday, Blitzer asked her about the
hullabaloo created by the campaign of Virginia Senator George Allen, who
charged his opponent, Democrat Jim Webb, with writing novels about the Vietnam
War that contained pornographic and salacious passages.
When Blitzer queried the second lady about Sisters, her novel that,
according to a press release issued by the Democratic Party, "featured a
lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes", Cheney refused to respond.
Instead, she went on the attack. Cheney wanted to know why CNN was "running
terrorist tapes of terrorists shooting Americans". She said she had seen
California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter "ask you a very good question
and you didn't answer it. Do you want us to win?"
The vice president's wife is no stranger to questioning the patriotism of
opponents of the "war on terror". Shortly after the attacks of September 11,
2001, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based group
co-founded by her and Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, published an
incendiary report titled "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are
Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It". The report maintained that
"colleges and university faculty" were "the weak link in America's response to
the attack".
Also on Friday, Bill O'Reilly - fresh from an hour-long session with the queen
of talk television, Oprah Winfrey - appeared on Late Night with David Letterman
(the National Broadcasting Co television program had been taped the previous
day, October 26). During what turned out to be a mildly combative interview,
O'Reilly said he had "an easy question" for Letterman.
"Do you want the United States to win in Iraq?" O'Reilly asked. Letterman
replied, "It's not easy for me because I'm thoughtful."
O'Reilly's question to Letterman was clearly not a spontaneous eruption.
Earlier in October, O'Reilly unveiled the question during an appearance on The
View, ABC (American Broadcasting Co) Television's morning talkfest.
This time, O'Reilly's target was two of the liberal co-hosts of the program,
Rosie O'Donnell and Joy Behar:
O'Reilly: Hold it, hold it, hold it. Want America to win in Iraq,
by the way?
O'Donnell: I don't think it's possible.
O'Reilly: Do you want, do you ...
O'Donnell: I think it's an ill-thought-out plan and I think we
should get out of that situation before [more] Americans are killed. Out. Out
of Iraq.
O'Reilly: Do you want America to win in Iraq? Joy Behar (co-host of The View): What does it mean to win?
O'Donnell: I want America to be what the founding fathers wanted
it to be, a democracy, where we the people ...
O'Reilly: Okay. So you don't want America to win in Iraq.
"It's a 'when did you stop beating your dog' sort of frame," Scott Silver
pointed out. "You ask the question and the person to whom you are asking it
flubs the response. Or you ask the question knowing that no one wants to lose
or would want to say, 'I want the US to lose.'"
What is "at stake in these next few days isn't the war in Iraq, it's control of
the House and Senate, and the framers of 'do you want to win' are evoking a
competition frame", Silver added.
"Listeners are meant to have the knee-jerk response that says: 'winning is good
- losing is bad'," he said. "[They] are expected to make the association
between the party saying we need to win in Iraq and the party for whom the
listener is expected to vote."
The question is not meant to be thoughtful, said Silver. It is specifically
"unthoughtful. It's a knee-jerk/reflexive frame, a frame which may not actually
dictate an answer, but makes it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to answer
'No' or 'Maybe' or 'I don't know.' 'Yes' is the only simple response to the
question."
Whether winning the "round" on cable television is enough to shift public
opinion away from the Democrats in the last days before the election remains to
be seen.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His
WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players,
institutions, victories and defeats of the US right.
