Iraq - "things are finally looking up for US Republicans"

That's because the Democrats politicized the war and like most things the Democrats do, it backfired. Greg Sheridan writes in the Australian.

A STRANGE thing has happened to the Iraq debate in the US in the past couple of weeks. The political momentum has swung back to the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans and away from the Democrats and other critics of the US-led Coalition operations in Iraq, of which Australia is part.

Partly it is events: the death of al-Qa'ida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the formation of a full, democratic Iraqi government representing all of the main communities. Partly it is political tactics, such as Bush's visit to Iraq last month. More important was the recent congressional debate on Iraq. The Republicans went on the political offensive. They passed motions supporting the US military effort. This had the effect of flushing the Democrats out, exposing their divisions and the hollowness of their alternative policies.

The party's last presidential candidate, senator John Kerry, moved an amendment calling for all US troops to be out of Iraq within a year. It was crushed in the Senate, with most Democrats voting against it. Kerry's action was a gift to Bush and the congressional Republicans. It seemed to validate the Bush argument of 2004 that Kerry would have been a dangerous president. Even the ultra-liberal Los Angeles Times castigated the Democrats, saying they are sending a message to American voters that they are unreliable on national security. The Republicans have moved the debate back to much more favourable ground as far as they are concerned. They want the debate to be about the future -- what do we do now? -- rather than whether it was right or wrong to go into Iraq in the first place.

In other words, the Democrats "are stuck on stupid".
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