THE LATEST ON THE WAR….So what’s the lead story in today’s newspapers? Answer: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. Here’s McClatchy:
Regardless of what politicians and the media talk about from week to week ? the Foley sex scandal in the House, a nuclear test in North Korea, a soaring stock market ? what dominates American politics this fall is Iraq.
It’s consuming George Bush’s second term, threatening his party’s control of Congress and endangering his dream of forging a Republican majority that would rule the country long after he retired to his Texas ranch.
Even some of President Bush’ staunchest allies in solidly Republican states are questioning the administration’s war policies, while others are scrambling to find new ways to talk about Iraq in the face of rising voter frustration over management of the war.
….”We haven’t found one part of the country, even in the South, where it is good to say ‘stay the course,’ ” said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a political group for GOP centrists. “But (candidates) don’t want to do a major in-your-face with the president. They are trying to work around the issue in their districts.”
One point on which adherents of these sharply different approaches appear to agree is that “staying the course” is fast becoming a dead letter. “I don’t believe that we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a centrist Maine Republican. “I don’t think there’s any question about that, that there will be a change” in the U.S. strategy in Iraq after next month’s elections.
And the New York Times? Instead of talking about the politics of the war, their story is about the war itself. We’re losing it. Ditto for the Wall Street Journal.
Did I miss anyone?
