Iran Talk is a most hot new topic for the foreign policy crowd
and the few thousand wine-sipping diplomats who circulate poorly
heated chateaus and speak of demarches and defuses.
But is Iran Talk hot enough to gush into the Congressional
campaign in November 2006? Can Team Bush transfer the mumbling
evasiveness of Straw, Steiner, ElBaredei and Lavrov into slogans to
take into the field to rally the GOP base for several wobbly Senate
seats?
For example, how does Iran Talk play in Pennsylvania to help the
President appear on platforms with incumbent, poll-trailing Rick
Santorum? Does telling the evangelical-Catholic-veteran-Fox red
base that a vote for Rick is a vote to strengthen my hand in the
coming showdown in the Perisan Gulf -- does this turn out the
numbers to overwhelm the routinely sluggish blue team of minorities
and union legacy hosueholds? Does give-me-strength work in Rhode
Island for sad sack Chafee; in New Jersey for young Kean against
the machine pol Menendez; in Florida for the femme fatale Harris
against the dullard Bill Nelson?
Spoke to my professional roundtable last eve, Curry of MSNBC,
Fund from Opinionjournal.com, Todd of Hotline, and Whalen of
Hoover, and they are collectively perusaded that Iran Talk will
figure in the election tactics this year.
How does it work for the Democrats? Does demanding withdrawal
from Iraq seem logical in the face of an Iran nuke threat? Or can
the Dems twist themselves to say that Team Bush has wasted blood
and treasure on the wrong threat these last four years, that Iran
is what Team Bush should have attacked after Kabul? But the Dems
are a default anti-war, soft diplomacy crowd, so how does any
war-drumming help a Dem candidate?
Iran Talk looks to be another strong card for the GOP, and Team
Bush will play it again and again from Labor Day to Election
Day.
And the hallucinatory Ahmadinejad looks to be another of those
political phenomenons that, if he didn't exist, the Rovians would
have to invent him.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Iraq, Iran, NATO
