Taikun: Some revealing comments there by Sen. Feinstein and others about pre-election terrorism. You'd think Cynthia McKinney had already been put back in office by her collection of fruits and nuts. Typical of the left side of the spectrum, they can't quite get their heads around the reality of our enemies' declared intentions and their ability to implement them:
"I don't think there's an argument that can be made, for the first time in our history, to delay an election," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a member of the Intelligence Committee.
"We hold elections in the middle of war, in the middle of earthquakes, in the middle of whatever it takes. The election is a statutory election. It should go ahead, on schedule, and we should not change it."
So if a dirty bomb, some chemical bombs or a nuke goes off in San Fransicso on November 1, the election "should go ahead, on schedule, and we should not change it?" Or is that only if it goes off in Texas? This is the sort of wishfulness-as-policy that can tip the balance and cause millions of people to vote for a known warmaker such as Bush over a guy who can't even get straight where he stood (stands?) on Iraq.
Many U.S. voters don't like our president starting optional wars that trigger long-term risks, but even more shun politicians who are blind to explicitly threatened, demonstrated risks to national security. The looney left can point out that Bush has on balance lowered our national security the way he's handled Iraq, but the left's myopia about the reality of non-corporate evil means the solutions they prefer may seem worse than the problems Bush creates. Since both parties are going to spend us into oblivion, national security is the default battleground where the candidates can validly differentiate themselves (if Hamlet could get off the tower wall).
It should be easy for any thinking, well-read person to imagine realistic scenarios in which we would need to put off the election a little while in order to avoid losing voters if Al Qaeda attacks hard enough to provoke such a state of panic that voters skip the polls. We must safeguard everyone's opportunity to vote. It is just common sense to plan ahead.
The only issue is this nonsense of some political hack (a Cabinet secretary) having charge of the decision. Now is when serious and well-meaning people should get together and agree on some (very stiff) criteria for postponement, a plan for reset ASAP, and a bipartisan procedure for making the decisions. But this is Washington. |
