Bush Steps Up Emphasis on Security as U.S. Economy Struggles

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush has stepped up his emphasis on protecting U.S. security as polls suggest the issue is becoming more critical to his re-election bid with the economy continuing to flounder.

Bush's advisers say they want voters in the 2004 presidential election to credit him with keeping the nation safe after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With U.S. unemployment at a nine-year high, they also are seeking to deflect criticism of Bush's handling of the economy while staking out an issue on which they believe the Democrats are weak, political analysts say.

``National security has moved up considerably as a cutting- edge issue,'' said Stephen Hess, presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. ``The president is going to stress it because people care about it and because the other side can't trample on it.''

All of it: http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aI33cOW2pnkQ&refer=us

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

He has protected us less by sending our a portion of our forces overseas.

Why are they getting away with basing their policy on what issues are important to the people when poll driven politics is still used to bash Democrats?

That SOB has got the whole world angry at us and U.S. soldiers are dying in Iraq at the rate of about 1 a day plus more U.S. soldiers are being maimed/wounded at about the rate of 3 a day.

We are under constant threat of some vague attack from a bunch of folks who really don't like Bush. Our soldiers are overseas and there are few still here to provide protection.

He has lied about just about everything (WMDs, Saddam=Osama bin Gone)and he is lying about this, also.

Yeah, because they sure as shit can't make the economy the issue. And the only people they can make security an issue with are those that like to stay ill-informed. What remarkable bullshit. It's as arrogant and assinine as their boasting about their inevitability of "re-election" or how they are going to "drown the opposition" with their "massive campaign package". Small dicked balding neofascist little white men trying to wave their dicks around and telling everyone to admit it's 2 foot long, or they'll shoot them...

There is an excellent argument to be made that Bush has weakened both. Dems should be supporting WPA type projects to increase infrastructure safety and on other security measures and emphasizing that we need to spend money on first responders at home instead of armies abroad. There was a Democratic rep. making good points on those issues on C-span this week but his name wasn't familiar to me and I promptly forget it.

And he can't talk about about our economy.

As more and more people become jobless *'s security will begin to erode. It is not about protecting the people against terrorists...it is about protecting the lying, shit smearing Bush administration from the people.