Bush hits Democrats on national security By NEDRA PICKLER , Associated Press writer

Bush persisted with the strategy that has brought Republican victory in the last two elections — campaigning on national security with some tax talk thrown in.

“If the other bunch gets elected, they’re going to raise your taxes,” Bush charged during a breakfast fundraiser for Rep. Rick Renzi at the posh Camelback Inn near Phoenix.

Worse yet, Bush said, some Democrats are putting national security at risk ….

“[V]ote Republican for the safety of the United States of America,” Bush said to applause from the donors who together gave $450,000 to see him speak ….

ABQjournal: GOP: Rove’s Visit to ‘Pump Up Troops’ By Jeff Jones, Journal Politics Writer

White House political guru Karl Rove’s stealth visit to Albuquerque on Saturday brought in some Republican campaign dollars while rallying local volunteers, GOP organizers said.

However, Democrats claimed the real purpose of Rove’s visit— the details of which were kept secret from the media and general public— was to quietly help Republican Rep. Heather Wilson in her 1st Congressional District battle against Patricia Madrid.

“Bush sends right-hand man to N.M. to defend his right-hand woman,” said a news release Saturday from the camp of Madrid, New Mexico’s Democratic attorney general. …

“That’s shallow thinking,” Weh said of the Democratic claim that Wilson was the prime purpose of Rove’s visit. “I can honestly say that Karl Rove has an interest in— and a concern for— down-ballot campaigns run all over the country, and New Mexico is no different.” [mjh: yeah, Rove’s got money riding on Darren White versus Geraldine Amato.]

Nonetheless, Wilson’s battle against Madrid is one of the fiercest congressional battles in the nation and is the premier GOP race in New Mexico this year.

Weh really takes me back with that reference to Republicans as “the party of deep thinkers,” as they arrogantly call themselves. (Wait a minute, I’m still laughing.) The party headed by DUHbya. The party that gets “stay the course” from Henry Kissinger — unquestionably the smartest guy in the room, but, come on, how successful was he with Vietnam. At precisely the same moment BushCo insisted Iraq in no way resembled Vietnam (but, rather, post-WWII Germany, for god’s sake), they were slavishly following Dr. K’s comparisons to the mistakes of Vietnam (and he made his share).

The GOP, the party whose single mantra was “you’ll get my contribution to the common good when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” (well, until they destroyed the Estate Tax, the one tool that delayed the rise of an American Aristocracy — “Death Tax,” a brilliantly deep phrase that silences any discussion of its true worth). The party of skinflints who always find money for their own interests (wars without end, for example). The Party that manages every decade to find a cause to keep everyone frightened. Indeed, there are vile and ruthless terrorist we must fight. We may not need to turn our nation into Guantanamo to do it. But the use of the word “may” makes me a cut-and-run traitor to the Party of Deep Thinkers.

“Deep Thinking,” as practiced by those in control of the Republican Party is a kind of semi-conscious meditation in which all practitioners endlessly shout the same nonsensical clichés — the shorter the better to maintain focus. It is a binary approach that not only denies the existence of gray but of color, for that matter. Yes/no. Truth/Lie. This “thinking” is anti-science: start with your conclusions and spout anything as evidence.

As a philosophy, Deep Thinking puts spine before brains, resolve before reason. Nuance and diversity are tools of the devil, which is to say anyone they don’t like. Oh, they’re deep — and hostile to breadth or consensus. mjh

mjh’s blog Search Results for deep thinker
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Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism By Bob Woodward, Washington Post Staff Writer

A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush’s Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.

“Of the outside people that I talk to in this job,” Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him.”

The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.

Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.

In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.