A good response to Dana Perino

[Qutzupalotl]

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday of Harry Reid:
it makes one wonder if he has the courage of his convictions and therefore will decide to defund the war.
She is essentially calling him a coward and a traitor, and daring him to make what she knows would be a deeply unpopular move.

Reid should respond: "If Bush had the courage of his convictions, he'd institute a draft." After all, the troops are obviously stretched thin and the National Guard would be hard-pressed to respond to an emergency at home.

If Bush really means what he says about staying in Iraq until the job is done (whatever that means--I thought the mission was accomplished?), he should put every American of fighting age front and center. Otherwise, it's just empty rhetoric.

Don't respond on their terms, respond on ours.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. EXACTLY!!! As George Lakoff says, We must learn to FRAME the message more to our advantage.

<snip>

Lakoff further argues that one of the reasons liberals have had difficulty since the 1980s is that they have not been as aware of their own guiding metaphors, and have too often accepted conservative terminology framed in a way to promote the strict father metaphor. Lakoff insists that liberals must cease using terms like partial birth abortion and tax relief because they are manufactured specifically to allow the possibilities of only certain types of opinions. Tax relief for example, implies explicitly that taxes are an affliction, something someone would want "relief" from. To use the terms of another metaphoric worldview, Lakoff insists, is to unconsciously support it. Liberals must support linguistic think tanks in the same way that conservatives do if they are going to succeed in appealing to those in the country who share their metaphors.

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. That's why my local newspaper, a member of the "liberal" media...

carries headlines referring to "tax relief." Honest to Betsy they had a front page story on Friday with the words tax relief in the headline. Oy!

[John Q. Citizen]

2. How does Perino know that defunding the occupation would be deeply unpopular?

I don't have any hard data, but my guess is that defunding the occupation may be extremely popular.

Anybody have any polling data on defunding the occupation?

And don't confuse my request with defunding the troops.

I'd like to see polling on defunding the occupation.

[Qutzupalotl]

5. My guess is she has a line of attack ready.

Something along the lines of, "See? The Democrats don't support the troops, even when they're in harm's way!"

[MADem]

3. Bingo--you don't happen to work for Charlie Rangel, do you? NT

[Qutzupalotl]

4. Hee hee... No, but we play on the same team.

His proposal for mandatory military service, while more equitable than a draft, was probably better suited as a tactic for a minority party than as something we should own. I'd rather make Bush own this.

[tavalon]

7. Purina Press Chow* needs to be smacked down

This is exactly how to do it.

But, expect to get a huge amount of flak for this one, especially by those who have children of draft age. They don't seem to be able to distinguish between a good checkmate and actually wanting a draft.

:popcorn: Don't take my popping of popcorn to be a sign that I won't jump in to support this. I just know that this here is gonna be a flame fest and no flame fest should be without :popcorn:

(*New Press Secretary, new nickname. When your press poodles are hungry, feed them Purina Press Chow, now with more spin!)