Since the 60’s, the intellectual elite of the Democrat Party has revealed a very thinly veiled contempt for the military and a suspicion of patriotism that has deeply hurt it politically. While most Americans are proud of our troops and what they do, it’s clear that a significant minority see them as rednecks inclined to, in the words of John Kerry himself, act in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. Since Vietnam, the Democratic Party has been identified as the home of this minority.
For years, Democrats have tried in vain to erase the impression held that it is reflexively anti-war, anti-military, and even anti-American. In other words, the party of Michael Moore. The 2004 campaign was often punctuated by candidates, led by Kerry himself, decrying all criticism of their foreign policy positions as attacks on their patriotism. And for a very good reason: Democrats know that in the minds of many Americans, their patriotism is indeed suspect.
That conversation has, for all intents and purposes, been off the table this year. Despite that fact that the U.S. is still at war, both in Iraq and against Islamic fascism worldwide, Republicans could not successfully steer the conversation to the issues on which Americans have tended to trust them most, especially war and peace. Simply put, to the dismay of many Republicans, the dominant theme of this campaign has been the exhaustion of the Republican agenda and the incompetence of Republican leadership.
What Republicans couldn’t do, John Kerry succeeded in doing: getting Americans to focus once again on what irks them so much about today’s Democratic Party. Their cultural elitism, their preference for internationalism over Americanism, their…well…Frenchness.
Will it be enough? Will this one reminder, so late in the campaign, of what is so wrong with today’s Democratic Party rally the Republicans and Middle-Americans to fight off the Democratic tide this year? Obviously, we won’t know until next Tuesday evening.
But if the Republicans do hold onto control of the House and Senate, or even limit their losses and beat expectations, they should thank John Kerry as much or more than anyone else. He accomplished in one unguarded moment what Republicans have been trying to do for the last several months: make this election a choice between competing candidates and not a referendum on Republican rule.