Santorum, Casey, and Iraq
Howard Fineman has a must-read piece in Newsweek's new issue about how the war in Iraq is playing out in the Pennsylvania Senate race between Rick Santorum and Bob Casey. This race is going to be one of the most interesting next year, and how Casey (and Santorum as well) handles Iraq as we move forward is definitely going to be something to watch.
posted by JBD @ 6:26 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
cool blog
Good article, though not incredibly surprising. Support for the Iraq war is falling all over the place. I have not looked “under the hood” of the polls but I would expect a working class areas to be less pro-war, for the simple reason that those areas tend to have less education and send a disproportionate share of its residents to war. The Iraq War is not simple in concept. Iraq did not attack us, it was not involved in 9/11, and it did not even attack a third state. Rather then cite self-defense, Bush took us to war in the hopes of creating a democratic Middle East. It is a war that rests upon a belief in the metaphysical power of the state to change culture. Because of the abstract nature of the justification, one would expect support for Iraq to be tied to education. Student protests aside, the Vietnam War had a similar pattern of support. Casey’s old Democrat positions (pro-labor and anti-abortion) and family legacy makes him attractive to working class white males and deprives Santorum of his best wedge issues. The war gives Casey just one more weapon with which to fight.
At some point, you knew a variety of trends and events would come together to affect the public opinion of the war. Sadly, I really think gas prices have more to do with it than anything. The blue collar workers who were with Bush, but now are really getting fed up with the effect gas prices are having on their wallets and are turning on him because they're no longer seeing any direct benefit personally from the war. It's as simple as that, I think. The larger debate about the war and what is happening is that the Bush administration seems to be just simply trying to run out the clock when somebody is in power, no longer willing to spend money to help build anything. They are simply trying to hold their breath until a point arrives they can cut and run, when it might not seem like they are cutting and running.
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