Republicans Weaken Torture Bill

Really, they do...read below to understand how to deflect ANY Republican election strategy attack...and use the new Torture Bill (House resolution HR 6166, Senate bill is S 3930) to see how.

First, the Torture Bill is not Rove's October surprise, but it is a prong of RNC election strategy:

Bush urges Senate to follow House, pass detainee bill: "President Bush urged the Senate on Thursday to follow the House lead and approve a White House plan for detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects, saying, 'The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror(ism).'"

Okay, now how does this legislation coming up act as an elections tactic for Republicans? Let's look at what is happening.

First Bush says:

"People shouldn't forget there's still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States," Bush told reporters after the closed-door meeting.

And his main opposition is legislators who agree that:

"...the measure with the exception of whether to allow terrorists the right to protest their detentions in court. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, contends the ability to file a "habeas corpus" petition is considered a fundamental legal right and necessary to uncover abuse.

...and what will happen is:

Four Democrats and Specter were being given opportunities to offer amendments Thursday, but all were expected to be rejected along party lines.

...because (additionally) some:

Democrats have said the legislation would give the president too much latitude when deciding whether aggressive interrogations cross the line and violate international standards of prisoner treatment.

Now, given all of that and because:

The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling in June that Congress' blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration's old system, it nevertheless would not include rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.

...and:

For nearly two weeks the White House and rebellious Republican senators have fought publicly over whether President Bush's plan would give a president too much authority. But they struck a compromise last Thursday, and Republicans are hoping approval will bolster their effort to cast themselves as strong on national security, a marquee issue this election year.

AND:

The measure also provides extensive definitions of war crimes such as torture, rape and biological experiments, but gives the president broad authority to decide which other techniques U.S. interrogators may use legally. The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.

Pause here...
...imagine what the Torture Bill allows, think of your brother in Iraq being captured and carted off to Country X then tortured to death and when, under the Geneva Conventions, you go to prosecute those responsible. To cover his ass the X-ian president gets his parliament to pass special provisions shielding the interrogators from having first, tortured and killed your brother (and of course the president himself from having ordered it) and additionally (so he won't have to go through all that bother again) grants himself the right to do anything like it in the future (except he can't use other people's brothers for biological experiments or sex slaves or--well--wait--the part where the president "has the authority to interpret "the meaning and application" of the Geneva Conventions," probably makes that moot...uh, nevermind).

Getting back to the illustration...so of course:

Democrats' opposition to the bill likely will fuel political attack ads from their Republican challengers as lawmakers go into the Nov. 7 elections.

Ya think? Will accusations sound like this?

...House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, said in a statement that Democrats who voted against the measure "voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists."

and this?

He added, "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan."

And because Democrats will respond like this:

Pelosi and other Democrats said the bill would give the president too much power to decide whether interrogation standards go too far.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said, "This bill is everything we don't believe in."

Instead of THIS (the Keith Olbermann-style response): Republicans have "voted to institutionalize failed Iraqi policy."

It can and WILL be used to bludgeon democrats across the board.

NOW getting back to "Republicans Weaken Torture Bill" and how that is a claim one could argue, begin from this assumption: by instutionalizing the failed Iraqi policy (fighting over there creates more, not less, terrorists) by way of institutionalizing the most internationally provocative, least succesful and clearly unproven methods of information extraction, i.e. torture, bill is actually weakened beacause it is simply not good international policy. In fact the entire exercise of the bill is creating Get-Out-Of-Jail-Cards for everyone who went along with the Criminal-in-Chief (can't say he's not loyal).

The useful strategic moral to this exercise is-learning to deflect ANY Republican election strategy.

These are the steps:

• deny the premise (do NOT defend against it)
• reframe the argument into their weakness--hint: it is the issue their tactics against your issue is hiding--for example their attack phrase for pro-peace Democrats is "cut and run." That phrase is the most negative frame of our best strength--the ability to create a workable plan to win the peace in Iraq--as opposed to Republican's failing, endless occupation (i.e. "stay and kill").
  
• do it in understandable emotional and real-world terms; avoid abstraction
  

Oh, and PLEASE S-T-O-P using and supporting the truncation of terrorism, terrorist, terroristic et al into "terror" unless you are framing "terror" against them.