"These are the stakes. Vote November 7." So concluded a recent installment of the Republican's latest "Be Very Afraid" campaign, in which a television advertisement scrolls through various Al-Qaida threats before echoing Lyndon Johnson's famous 1964 campaign warning.
While one can grow weary of the biannual declaration that "No, this is the most important election in our lifetime," we should not minimize the very real consequences of the coming vote. In eight days America will make a decision about her character, and about this nation's tolerance for deception, corruption and failure.
Republican leaders have used recent electoral victories to showcase just how incapable they are of governing. Sadly it is no hyperbole to suggest Republicans are criminally unfit for public leadership. Seventeen GOP members of Congress now find themselves under federal investigation for everything from accepting bribes to enriching friends and family with public money to preying on teenage pages.
I'd need a calculator to add up everyone else in the party in legal trouble (the most recent casualty being former Bush aide David Safavian, sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for lying and concealing unethical relations with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, another convicted Republican).
But perhaps even moreso than for these ethical malfeasances, Republicans need to be held accountable for the moral monstrosity in Iraq. My last column explored how quickly that adventure is spiraling into a disaster - as increasingly recognized by people of all ideologies - with an ever-heavier toll being wrought in precious lives and resources.
President Bush has made his military plan for the rest of his term clear: Stay the course. More of the same. A little more rousing rhetoric on the evil of our enemies, and victory is at hand. His is the "Tinkerbell strategy," where we just have to clap loudly enough and Iraq somehow blossoms into a thriving democracy. Ninety-six troops killed in October? Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan? Clap louder!
Republican failures, of course, are nothing new and haven't precluded electoral victories the past four years. While reserving 90 percent of their advertisement budget for smearing opponents is hardly unusual, the desperation in the face of looming defeat is nothing short of pathetic.
The party has most recently turned its mavens of character assassination on Michael J. Fox, that partisan firebrand, for advocating stem cell research in the hope that it may lead to a cure for his debilitating Parkinson's. In other races, the Republican National Committee was forced to pull an ad against Harold Ford, Jr., a black Senate candidate in Tennessee, after even many Republicans accused it of shameless race baiting. The Department of Justice is also now investigating a Californian Republican candidate who mailed Democratic voters in his district a letter warning legal immigrants that voting is a crime punishable by jail.
For everyone who is fed up with the direction our country has been led the past few years, Nov. 7 is your last chance to say you've had enough. This is your last chance to hold George Bush accountable and declare that responsible government still means something in the United States of America.
Ten Republicans have now called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, but Bush has demonstrated that in his administration failure is something to be rewarded (remember when George Tenet won the Medal of Freedom?). So if a growing chorus of Republican dissatisfaction isn't enough to wreak change on Washington, maybe the rest of America - now 300 million strong - can help.
At the ballot box, make a statement that Dennis Hastert, after covering up for sexual predators and blocking corruption probes, is not fit to preside over the People's House. Make a statement that Republicans, after rubber-stamping an Iraq policy which has left 2,810 U.S. soldiers dead and exacerbated the terrorist threat, have forfeited the trust to keep us safe.
Make a statement that says enough is enough. These are the stakes. Vote Nov. 7.
Jacob Shelly is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairsand a liberal columnist for the Eagle.
