Bush lost Murtha. And if he's lost Murtha, he's lost middle America.

by Bill in Portland Maine
Wed Nov 30, 2005 at 05:52:54 AM PDT
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Columnist Mark Shields spoke with Rep. John Murtha before the congressman gave his now-famous Iraq speech, and...


I predicted that the speech he was about give would have the same impact on the debate over Iraq that former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite had on February 27, 1968, when he spoke of the near-certainty that "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." President Lyndon Johnson said: "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Murtha did not believe me.

What made it all true was the venality and stupidity of the Republicans. From the personality-challenged White House press secretary accusing him of "surrender" to the clueless, but venomous, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, unaware of his combat record, accusing Murtha of being a " coward," Republicans made Jack Murtha the most prominent Democrat in town.

As one astute Senate Republican aide observed to David Rogers of The Wall Street Journal, "If the House Republicans want to make Jack Murtha the face of the Democratic Party, then Republicans will really be trounced next year."

Congressional Democrats, a large majority of whom need vertebrae transplants and are terrified of taking any position on Iraq, mostly kept their distance from Murtha until they realized that public reaction had swung his way. They then embraced him. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has changed the terms of the national debate, and Democrats should be so lucky as to have Jack Murtha as their party's 2006 face.
http://www.dailykos.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/28/shields.murtha/

come forth to speak against Bush's war and his lack of planning, and his deliberately misleading intel, and some even offered detailed withdrawal plans, but few media outlets gave them the courtesy of reporting their concerns.

No one really wants to find the bastard, either. Kinda like that nice Usama fellah we all used to hear so much about...