Sixty percent of Americans oppose the U.S. war in Iraq, the highest number since polling on the subject began with the commencement of the war in March 2003, according to poll results and trends released Wednesday.
And a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year, according to results from the Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted last week on behalf of CNN. The corporation polled 1,047 adult Americans by telephone.
[snip]
According to trends, the number of poll respondents who said they did not support the Iraq war has steadily risen as the war stretched into a second and then a third year. In the most recent poll, 36 percent said they were in favor of the war -- half of the peak of 72 percent who said they were in favor of the war as it began.
Sixty-one percent, however, said they believed at least some U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year. Of those, 26 percent said they would favor the withdrawal of all troops, while 35 percent said not all troops should be withdrawn. Another 34 percent said they believed the current level of troops in Iraq should be maintained.
Asked about a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 57 percent of poll respondents said they supported the setting of such a timetable, while 40 percent did not and 4 percent had no opinion. Only half the sample, or about 524 people, was asked the timetable question.
Here is the section of Ned Lamont's issue statement on the Iraq War that deals with withdrawal:
Looking forward, I salute the patriotism and wisdom of Congressman Murtha and others who emphasize that “stay the course” is not a winning strategy for Iraq or America. Our best chance of success requires that the Iraqis take control of their own destiny. America should make clear that we have no designs upon their oil and no plans for permanent bases. While we will continue to provide logistical and training support as long as we are asked, our frontline military troops should begin to be redeployed and our troops should start heading home.
This differs from the view of 57% of Americans -- how?
And yet, Joe Lieberman is planning to run as an independent, saying to Matt Lauer on yesterday's Today show:
I am committed to this campaign, to a different kind of politics, to bringing the Democratic Party back from Ned Lamont, Maxine Waters to the mainstream, and for doing something for the people of Connecticut.
I'm not even going to GO in the direction of Lieberman's obvious race-baiting by including Maxine Waters in that statement, but he's clearly trying to frame Ned Lamont as some kind of rabid A.N.S.W.E.R. leftist. If Ned Lamont is "extreme", then almost two out of three Americans are "extreme" as well.
If Joe Lieberman is a "mainstream Democrat", then why has Karl Rove offered to help in his campaign as the candidate of a Party of One? Lieberman's camp is spinning madly to deny this offer, but do the math: Karl Rove calls Lieberman after the primary just to be social, but doesn't offer any assistance? That just doesn't make sense. Since when does any White House take such avid interest in a single Senate campaign? R.J. Eskow isn't convinced, and neither am I. Eskow notes that Lieberman has learned his Rovian campaign tactics well:
Lieberman's statements from the beginning have made it clear that, in his mind, any dissent from Bush's war policy constitutes a) "weakness on national defense," b) is a clear sign that Democrats "lack national security" credibility, and c) means that Dems "have yielded to the extremists" (despite the fact that new polls reveal those "extremists" agree with 60% of all Americans about the war).
Democrats are "extremist "and "weak on national security?" That's straight out of the Rove playbook.
Now the Republicans and their media associates are having a field day with Joe's loss, at the expense of the Democrats. Why would a Democrat - any Democrat - be willing to cause such harm to his own party? Unless he were being guided by a Republican ...
Lieberman immediately went savagely negative, and attacked Lamont for his own greatest weakness - a classic Rove strategy.
Joe came out swinging - below the belt. That's Rove's style all the way.
Lieberman's first campaign move was to launch the infamous (and stunningly inept) "bear ad," which - astonishingly - accused Lamont of being a Republican's tool! (In this case, former Sen. Lowell Weicker was the "big bear" to Lamont's "cub.")
Then, Lieberman and his supporters accused Lamont and his backers of running a "hate" campaign - while simultaneously spewing the most vitriolic campaign rhetoric in recent memory. (Lamont supporters were described as "Stalinist," "haters," "purgers," "fascists," and - if they were Jewish - as "bad Jews.")
Take you greatest weakness and label your opponent with it. Classic Rove.
And just as I did yesterday, Eskow notes how similar the "web site hack" incident is to Karl Rove bugging his own office in an attempt to discredit the opposition.
The GOP is frantically pulling from its own playbook in an effort to prop up Joe Lieberman's sense of entitlement. But will it fly? I'm not so sure.
Yesterday I was talking with a co-worker who identifies himself as a staunch conservative. This isn't your rabid, knee-jerk conservative, not a kool-aid drinker, not a Bush Cultist, but the kind of "strong defense fiscal conservative laissez-faire on social policy" conservative that conservatives USED to be. I asked him what he thought about the Iraq war. He said that when we went into Iraq, he thought it was a good idea -- we'd find the WMD, set up a democracy, and it would stabilize the Middle East. Interestingly, vengeance for 9/11 didn't figure into his view on Iraq, which is probably why he's better able to question it now. He acknowledged that Iraq is FUBAR, and that nothing we do seems to be working. When I pointed out that we seem to have a choice between leaving a country that we've made FUBAR and looking bad, or staying in a country that we've made FUBAR, looking bad, AND killing thousands more Americans and Iraqis, he agreed -- that's basically our choice at this point.
I asked him if he felt betrayed by the President. He thought for a minute, and said he's not sure if Bush lied or if he was misled by the people around him. He did, however, say that if he knew in 2000 what he knew now about Bush, he never would have voted for him.
He also didn't perceive Ned Lamont as being a wild-eyed radical, either.
The Fox News crowd gets all the press, but I suspect that there are a lot more people like my co-worker than we think.
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