Changing the Subject

Intermixed with all the bad news for Republicans, they have found one issue that works for them. Energy. Now of course they have the difficulty of explaining how Bush hasn't been able to do anything about it in 8 years of office, but McCain will have better luck. Usually they explain this by muttering about Democrats. Certainly talking about those dastardly Democrats who like Moose more than People is more fun than defending the Bush Record on Iraq.

The theme of Dick Morris's latest article is that Obama is an enormous flip-flopper, so why not flip flop on energy and support drilling everything. But in his list of flip-flops, and there have been some doozys lately, Morris does overstate his case a little. For example he presents this as a flip-flop.

Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.

Silly. He always said he would plan the specifics of our withdrawal with the military; one of his repeated phrases is that we need to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. I think Morris's assumption is that the military will tell him "You've got to stay in Iraq forever, sir." I'm not sure they will. And at any rate, I believe it's the Military's job to execute tactically the direction the President gives them. If Obama makes it an objective to withdraw military from Iraq in a sensible manner, I'm not sure what the Military can say to that.

At any rate the rest of it is on energy. I do think that if the Republicans can convince the American people that the high gas prices are entirely the Democrats doing, well, it will be good for them. That might be a hard sell, particularly if Obama insists on bringing up Iraq.