Victory architect Karl Rove, the man Dems love to hate even more than GW, tried out some winning-formula lines in Erie PA:
“You can’t say I want to win the war but not be willing to fight the war,” said Rove, Bush’s top political adviser. “And if leading Democrats have their way, our nation will be weaker and the enemies of our nation will be stronger. And that’s a stark fact, and it’s the reason that this fall election will turn very heavily on national security.”
He improved on “basic [Bush] themes — that voters face a stark choice between the parties on taxes and terrorism” — with cracks at Dems who voted against trying terrorist detainees at Gitmo:
“You need to have the ability to try these people without worrying about the ACLU showing up saying, ‘Wait a minute, did you Mirandize them when you found them on the battlefield,’ ” he said. “With all due respect, I don’t happen to remember that in World War II, that when we captured Nazis and Japanese and took them to camps, that the first thing we did was provide them legal aid.”
And for Nancy Pelosi, for voting against renewing the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance of terrorist calls, and the war itself:
“With a record like that, you can see why Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t want this election to be about national security.”
Of Richard Nixon, Dems asked, “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Of Dems, Republicans ask or should ask, “Would you trust security to this party?”
