Sunday, November 27, 2005
Democrats Recruiting War Vets for 2006
Maj. Ladda (Tammy) Duckworth, an Iraqi war veteran who lost her legs when a rocket-propelled grenade struck her Black Hawk helicopter, invited Rahm Emanuel, the Democrats' master strategist in the House of Representatives, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center one day to meet some recovering vets from their home state of Illinois. "We were walking down the hall and you could see the incredible response to her and her leadership," Emanuel told Newsweek. "She goes to see other troops to keep their spirits up."
Duckworth recently returned home to Chicago's affluent suburbs to begin what looked like an unofficial campaign for the open congressional seat now held by retiring Republican Rep. Henry Hyde. Still on active duty, Duckworth cannot declare her candidacy or talk politics to the media. But according to Democratic leaders, she's their preferred candidate, according to a report in the current issue of Newsweek.
Duckworth is part of a new breed of macho Democrats, joining eight Iraq veterans who have already announced themselves as candidates in next year's congressional elections. (The party is also reaching out to veterans of wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Vietnam, as well as former CIA officers and FBI agents). These Democrats don't offer a unified strategy on how to leave Iraq. But they represent the most visible sign of the sea change in politics over the past year, report Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and Washington Correspondent Jonathan Darman in the Dec. 5 issue of Newsweek. Recent polls show Democrats running neck-and-neck with Republicans on terrorism and comfortably ahead on Iraq.
The vets also represent the Democrats' best hope of burying their GOP-crafted caricature as the Mommy party of John Kerry -- unable to defend the country from terrorists or themselves from political attack. "A macho Democrat is someone who isn't afraid to stand up for what they believe in, to tell their story, to fight back when they're unfairly attacked," says John Lapp, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Another vet Emanuel found is Chris Carney, who is running for a House seat in northeastern Pennsylvania. Carney is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, but his specialty is intel and counterterrorism. That took him inside the Bush administration as a Pentagon adviser, where he argued the case that there were links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. As a uniformed officer, Carney defended the road to war even as he began harboring concerns about its execution -- the lack of troops on the ground and the absence of planning for a possible insurgency. He decided to run -- as a Democrat, his lifelong affiliation -- in part to reshape policy on the war, advocating aphased withdrawal with clear targets. "For every trained up battalion of Iraqi security forces, an American battalion should get to come home," he told Newsweek.
The White House says it doesn't matter who the candidate is: the Democrats cannot argue from a position of strength on the war given the depth of antiwar sentiment inside their base. Other Republicans say the war isn't going to affect the '06 elections either way. "Local dynamics will trump everything," insists Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Reynolds dismisses the Democratic veterans' strategy as "just a bunch of hoopla," saying his goal is simply to recruit the best candidates.
Maj. Ladda (Tammy) Duckworth, an Iraqi war veteran who lost her legs when a rocket-propelled grenade struck her Black Hawk helicopter, invited Rahm Emanuel, the Democrats' master strategist in the House of Representatives, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center one day to meet some recovering vets from their home state of Illinois. "We were walking down the hall and you could see the incredible response to her and her leadership," Emanuel told Newsweek. "She goes to see other troops to keep their spirits up."
Duckworth recently returned home to Chicago's affluent suburbs to begin what looked like an unofficial campaign for the open congressional seat now held by retiring Republican Rep. Henry Hyde. Still on active duty, Duckworth cannot declare her candidacy or talk politics to the media. But according to Democratic leaders, she's their preferred candidate, according to a report in the current issue of Newsweek.
Duckworth is part of a new breed of macho Democrats, joining eight Iraq veterans who have already announced themselves as candidates in next year's congressional elections. (The party is also reaching out to veterans of wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Vietnam, as well as former CIA officers and FBI agents). These Democrats don't offer a unified strategy on how to leave Iraq. But they represent the most visible sign of the sea change in politics over the past year, report Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and Washington Correspondent Jonathan Darman in the Dec. 5 issue of Newsweek. Recent polls show Democrats running neck-and-neck with Republicans on terrorism and comfortably ahead on Iraq.
The vets also represent the Democrats' best hope of burying their GOP-crafted caricature as the Mommy party of John Kerry -- unable to defend the country from terrorists or themselves from political attack. "A macho Democrat is someone who isn't afraid to stand up for what they believe in, to tell their story, to fight back when they're unfairly attacked," says John Lapp, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Another vet Emanuel found is Chris Carney, who is running for a House seat in northeastern Pennsylvania. Carney is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, but his specialty is intel and counterterrorism. That took him inside the Bush administration as a Pentagon adviser, where he argued the case that there were links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. As a uniformed officer, Carney defended the road to war even as he began harboring concerns about its execution -- the lack of troops on the ground and the absence of planning for a possible insurgency. He decided to run -- as a Democrat, his lifelong affiliation -- in part to reshape policy on the war, advocating aphased withdrawal with clear targets. "For every trained up battalion of Iraqi security forces, an American battalion should get to come home," he told Newsweek.
The White House says it doesn't matter who the candidate is: the Democrats cannot argue from a position of strength on the war given the depth of antiwar sentiment inside their base. Other Republicans say the war isn't going to affect the '06 elections either way. "Local dynamics will trump everything," insists Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Reynolds dismisses the Democratic veterans' strategy as "just a bunch of hoopla," saying his goal is simply to recruit the best candidates.
