Ray Malone's Commentary

At 8:00PM on June 28, 2005 President Bush went to the people with his case for his policy in Iraq. The Democrats appeared to be very unhappy with his speech... That would imply that it was an effective speech.

I watched the President's speech live and watched the rerun on Fox at 2:00AM. It was good. It was powerful, and it made some very effective points.

It should be noted that CNN and ABC among others had some polls all ready to show that the president's policy was in trouble with the America people. The polls had very different results. The ABC poll showed the American people support the president. The CNN poll showed the president had suffered a major erosion of support.

I am not surprised that the CNN polls showed the President in trouble and was surprised that the ABC poll showed the president doing well. I suspect there has been some erosion since the election. No president can survive the constant media attacks with out some loss of support. I am very suspicious of media polls. The fact that the president did this speech before a military audience says that the president is trying to rally support. Perhaps just to counter the effects of the constant anti-American and pro-terrorist bias of the main stream media.

I think the Fox coverage was fair.. I doubt that any of the other channels gave him an even break. But that does not matter much, Reagan proved that an effective presentation by a president can override the bias of the media.

I am just guessing about the Bush approval ratings, but I bet the real Bush approval numbers are not that bad. Yesterday wall street reacted to the public optimism on the economy with a major uptick in stock prices. I would wager that virtually all of the people who want us to pull out of Iraq voted for Democrats and Kerry in the 2004 election.. I suspect that group consists of nearly all the Democrats, and about a third of the moderates. That gets us the ABC number of 58 percent that thinks we have to win the war in Iraq.

There is a lesson from Watergate that the media has never understood. If you looked at the polls in the spring of 1972 it did not look all that good for Nixon. The disapproval was in the high 50s. But if you broke those numbers down, about 42 percent supported Nixon and about 58 percent did not support the way Nixon was handling the Vietnam war. But if you dug into the numbers you found about 20 percent of those polled thought Nixon should do what it took to get quick victory... they supported everything from carpet bombing to nuking North Vietnam. They were angry with Nixon for not going for the jugular in Vietnam. That translated on election day 1972 to 63.7 percent of the votes going for Nixon. Those that wanted a quick and total victory were not going to vote for a Democrat peacenik.

I would bet a significant portion of the displeasure with President Bush is not from those that oppose the war. It is from those that want the president to be more ruthless and forceful in dealing with the insurgents.

There are reasons to believe this is true. Why else would Democrats blame Bush for not sending enough troops? They are trying to appeal to all who are unhappy with the President for not doing enough. The Democrats have to be aware that a significant amount of the opposition to the President is because they feel he is not doing enough.

We can draw the same conclusion from the President's speech. Presidents do not spend time trying to change minds that do not need to be changed. President Bush used valuable time to emphasize that he would give the military what ever size force it said it wanted and needed. He said he listened to his military leaders and gave them whatever they wanted. He told the doubters that he was giving the generals whatever they requested. That says there are a significant number of Americans whose criticism of the president is for not fighting hard enough.

I think there was another factor that contributed to the decision to make the speech. It was likely the primary reason. That reason was to influence congress. Many congress critters are very ignorant of history and what the voters will do in certain situations. Mike DeWhine is prime example of a politician with a tin ear. That idiot cost himself and his son their political careers by not knowing who voted for the President in 2004. He looked at Sonaviches numbers in Ohio 2004 and thought he could thumb his nose at Ohio's t voters to whom the Supreme court is a major issue. He will find out his lost future when he faces the voters. Voinovich hid his true colors until after he got the votes. Dewine displayed his before he has to face the voters. That is called your basic DUMB move.

So I think the President went on TV to also influence the wavering fools in congress who don't understand that the surrender monkeys only represent about 42 percent of the voters.

The media thinks it controls public opinion. They will be quick to tell us that only a fraction of the voters watched the speech. They try to make the case that their follow up reports control public opinion. They do not. It is the people who watch the speech talking to those who did not who control pubic opinion. The 1972 and 1984 elections certainly prove that..

No matter what the ant- American Main Stream Media tells you, understand this. Watergate did not destroy Richard Nixion. It destroyed LBJ and his picked successor Hubert H. Humphries. The Democrats would not support LBJ's war and the Republicans and most moderates would not support LBJ's war. But the Republicans and a majority of the moderates supported Nixon's War in 1972, Nixon won 63.7 percent of the votes cast. In 1958 Ronald Reagan won only 58 percent.

Yet if one listens to the media, the Iraqi war has the president on the ropes. Note that the president in his speech claimed that Americans supported the war and the troops. If Rove's polls showed a majority did not support the president and his troops, he would not have said it. Consider the reaction to that statement of those who do not support the war. They screamed back at the TV, "Like He**... I do". The President made that statement to reassure his supporter that they are a majority.. not to motivate his detractors into screaming at the TV. That is another sign the president has majority support.

History tells us those voters who want more done will not support the Democrats. They may be a bit unhappy with the President, but they are very angry with the Democrats. The president was obviously going for the "he's not doing enough " crowd. I think his speech bridged that gap.

The Democrats have a terrible dilemma. There are two groups of people who are unhappy with the war. in Iraq. Neither group is close to a majority of voters. And Democrats can't win one group with out losing the other.

What the Democrats need to understand is that even if things go very badly in Iraq they will not unite those opposed to the president. It will just move those who support the war into the "Bush must do More group" They will not move into the Lets get out group. On the other hand if the war goes well, much of the "We are not doing enough" group will move into the approval group. It is the 1972 Democratic dilemma. There is no way to unite the two groups who oppose the president. It will not be hard for the president to unite two of the three groups.

The Democrats do have a speech impediment. There is nothing they can say to earn the support of both groups who are critical of the president.

The Teddy Kennedy's, John Kerry's and Hillary Clinton's may be having a good time trashing the president... but they will soon enough learn it is not a good time to be a Democrat.