Military could be swing vote in '04

WASHINGTON -- U.S. soldiers leapt to their feet and whooped in elation Thursday when their commander in chief unexpectedly appeared at a Thanksgiving celebration in Iraq.

"He's got to win in '04. No one else can prosecute this war like he can," Capt. John Morrison of Butler County, Pa., told a reporter at the gathering.

Earlier in the week, President Bush got an equally gratifying reception at an Army base in Colorado: approving grunts of "hoo-ah," chants of "U-S-A" and, from one section of the audience, cheers of "Four more years."

"I'm glad you're on my side," Bush, wearing an olive green Army jacket over his shirt and tie, declared to the 5,000 flag-waving soldiers and family members at Fort Carson, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, which has deployed 12,000 of its 15,000 troops to Iraq.

The two presidential appearances, both drawing heavy media coverage, gave the impression that the political bond between the U.S. military and the Republican Party remains strong. Out of the glare of the cameras, however, there are indications that bond has weakened.

In fact, the military might have become yet another special interest group of swing voters to be wooed in tight elections.

Reasons include the mounting casualties in Iraq, uncertainty over the president's plans for occupying and reconstructing that country, and what some critics interpret as a lack of respect and financial commitment from the Bush administration for veterans.

"If your job is to recruit military voters to your party, it's going to be easier if you're a Republican, even in 2004," said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University. "But if you're a Democrat and your job is to woo military voters to your party, it's going to be easier in 2004 than it was in the last presidential election, which was the high-water mark in terms of Republican appeal to military voters."

No political expert is predicting a wholesale exodus of military voters to the Democrats in next year's presidential election. "The cultural divide is still too great for that," Feaver said. But since a state's electoral votes can turn on hundreds of ballots, as occurred in 2000, rather than millions, every group will be courted heavily by both parties, even if it means just peeling off a few votes here and there in targeted states.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Lindsay Taylor dismisses any suggestion that American soldiers are not solidly supporting their commander in chief.

"President Bush enjoys the support of our men and women in uniform because he has significantly increased defense spending to provide the resources they need to carry out their duties, as well as increasing their pay," Taylor said.

Before visiting Fort Carson, Bush signed into law a record $401.3 billion defense spending bill that included a 4 percent pay raise for soldiers and significant boosts in family separation allowances and imminent danger pay.

The signing ceremony, held at the Pentagon rather than the White House, came after months of criticism from military and veterans circles.

That criticism prompted Benjamin Wallace-Wells to raise the prospect of a military "swing" vote with a cover story in the November issue of Washington Monthly magazine.

Wallace-Wells, like other journalists trying to assess the political leanings of the military, relied heavily on anecdotes to make his point because the Pentagon prohibits political polling of soldiers.

There is widespread acceptance, however, of the notion that military officers favor the GOP by 8-1, while the ranks of the enlisted, even with their higher proportions of women and minorities, still tilt 3-2 for Republicans.

The 2000 presidential contest provided the most convincing evidence of the consensus view that the military is pro-GOP. In the Florida recount, Bush's partisans fought vigorously to prevent Al Gore's advocates from excluding disqualified military absentee ballots from the presidential vote recount.

"There may be something to this idea that the military is no longer in lock step behind the Republicans," said Stewart Nusbaumer, a disabled Marine veteran from New York who organized Veterans Against the Iraq War earlier this year. "We're hearing from soldiers every day who are fed up with the mess the president has made in Iraq."

While the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Shoomaker, recently told a Senate committee that "morale is solid" among the troops in Iraq, a mid-October study by Stars and Stripes newspaper found half the soldiers there reporting low morale and complaining of insufficient training and equipment.

There are 1.4 million active-duty personnel in the military. Guard and Reserve forces total 1.3 million.

There are about 3.6 million military dependents. And so far, it has been the dependents of soldiers who have been most vocal in their criticism of the president.

Families air concerns Families at Fort Carson have generally supported the war, but there were expressions of concern during the president's visit this past week, especially about the president's failure to attend any funerals or memorials for soldiers who have died in Iraq.

"What makes me mad the most is, past presidents have gone to funerals and he hasn't gone to any," said Lori Hartman, whose husband, Spc. Corey Hartman, heads to Iraq in February. "It's like he wants to turn his back and not realize what's really going on."

To blunt such criticism, Bush met for almost two hours with about 100 relatives of killed and wounded soldiers from Fort Carson. It was his third meeting with families of fallen soldiers since the war in Iraq began.

A bigger political problem for the president than "swing" military voters may be the 26.4 million military veterans, who constitute 13 percent of the nation's adult population.

Veterans are fuming over the Bush administration's attempt last summer to cut billions of dollars from the Department of Veterans Affairs budget over the next decade and to close some VA hospitals. It was an "in-your-face insult," said Joe Fox Sr., head of Paralyzed Veterans of America.

They also are agitated over the president waiting three years to change a 19th century military regulation that prohibits a retired soldier from receiving both a pension and disability benefits.

Ultimately, the administration agreed to a compromise that only partially repeals the law and phases in over 10 years, too late for thousands of aging veterans.

The compromise was "borne of political expediency, to make an embarrassing issue go away," said Thomas Coreny, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America.

Feaver, in his studies of civil-military relations, lumps soldiers and veterans together as "national security voters."

These voters are culturally more conservative than the general population and are, to some degree, disdainful of cultural elites found most frequently in the Democratic Party. They have tended to support the Republican Party since the Reagan presidency and its unprecedented defense buildup.

Feaver said the Clinton presidency and the perception of an anti-military sentiment in the Oval Office solidified the national security voter preference for the GOP, culminating in robust support for Bush in 2000.

"Many factors push someone to vote," he said. "And now, there is the potential for forces which have always pushed toward the Republican to be neutralized, or even pushing a little bit towards the Democrats."

"A little bit," said Veterans Against the Iraq War's Nusbaumer, "may be all the Democrats need."

Hopefully. As much as I dislike some of the Republican policies, the Democrats (AKA American Socialist Party) is even less desirable. The Active Military has traditionally been a Republican voting block due largely to the traditional Democrat’s blatant disrespect for them.
Neither party shows much actual respect for veterans and retirees – except for the occasional tossed bone and lip service when politically necessary. We’re just too small a voting block to wield much power.

If, as many have said, people vote their pocketbook. Try this on for size.

Under Clinton the gap between military pay and civilian pay had grown to 13.5 percent. And pay raises were capped at .5 percent below, I SAY AGAIN, .05 PERCENT BELOW the rate of inflation, guaranteeing that the gap would grow.

Under Bush, the gap has decreased to about 5.5 percent (in less than three years) and the pay raises have been capped at .5 percent above, ABOVE, the rate of inflation.

Also, the pay scales have been reworked to favor mid career and Sr NCOs and mid career officers. This was done without affecting pay raises for anyone else.

Another thing, now we are soldiers doing a soldiers job instead of these endless and thankless peace keeping missions where we were nothing more than UN lackeys with wishy washy rules of engagement that was sure to get us killed, all for a blue helmet. We finally have a purpose and are doing the job that we were trained to do.

Believe me, many soldiers know where their bread is buttered and will vote for Bush. As long as Bush gives us the tools to do what we have to and stays out of our way when we're doing it, he can't go wrong. (However, if he promised to close the pay gap in the next year, that wouldn't hurt at all)

The Dems were trying to get ballots that were not postmarked before the election but received after the election disqualified. Hell, they even tried to get those received before the election disqualified because they weren't postmarked.

That points to some things that need to be fixed in the military's handling of mail. First, every absentee ballot should be postmarked. Second, in lieu of a postmark, perhaps a dated signature from someone (higher officer maybe) should be accepted. Third, a big push should be made to get those in the military to send in absentee ballots earlier (listen to the Dems howl about that one. "Bush orders military to vote for him"). The Dems took aim at a problem in verifying the date a ballot was sent. We need to fix that hole so they can never try to use it again.

Now if we could just fix the thousand and one methods of vote fraud the Dems use every election.

Openly claiming there will be a direct correlation between a pay increase and a vote is pretty cynical.

But it's true. Under Cliton (oops... did I misspell that?) we were taken down to a skeleton crew and didn't see an honest cost of living adjust for YEARS. His administration showed nothing but contempt for our service members. In the last three years our paychecks, housing and morale have all risen sharply. (Whoopie! E-5's can get off WIC and food stanmps!) The only way things will conitnue to get better for us is if the POTUS stays put. The soldiers and families who have dedicated our lives (and lifestyles) to defending our country owe a LOT to Bush, personally.

Before Clinton's Secretary of Defense - Cohen - left office he issued an order to stop voting on many military installations. How he and Clinton determined which forts, bases, camps, etc. they wanted to enforce that the military could not vote on them I do not know. I do know that this will make it very difficult for many of our military to vote as they will have to go off base.

Information Technology Association of America

http://www.itaa.org/

Is the leading the effort for electronic voting and this is what they want to enforce upon the military. Harris Miller, President, is a good friend and huge supporter of the Clintons. He works closely with Bill and Hill.

In fact, the military might have become yet another special interest group of swing voters to be wooed in tight elections.

This is pure Barbara Streisand. What will render the military vote a "swing" vote, will be the massive fraud perpetrated by the Dems. They know the military would never vote for Hillary or Gore, so they have to be squelched, lost, stolen or made unusable. I can just picture some liberal dem secstate of a red state saying," Sorry folks, the military absentees got rained on, we cant use'em!"

The Disabled Veterans Tax is referred to by the administrations as “concurrent receipt”.
I retired disabled after over twenty years of military service. Because of this my VA disability payment is subtracted from my Army retirement. The reasoning is that we are paid for our disability with the tax break given for being disabled.
This reasoning applies only to military retirees. If a civil servant retires disabled both the disability and the regular retirement is drawn.
If I had left the military at nineteen years and worked civil service – or any other job – it would not be subtracted and my nineteen years of military service would be counted as federal service towards retirement. Only military retirees must forfeit the VA disability payment.
I have been informed by the Whiter House that my $1560 a month makes me “well off”.

I've heard Hillary's sock puppet, General Wesley Clark, is about as popular in military ranks as a skunk at a picnic.

I know troops who fought under him in the Balkans and they can't wait to vote against him. And they have some very uncomplimentary things to say against him.

Note that the only two reps of veteran's groups quoted are two Democrat-aligned fringe groups, the VVA (which descended from the wing of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War which was not overtly Marxist, and which has a long history of being led by phonies and wannabees) and some group of "Veterans for Apeasement in Iraq" or some such essentially Democrat, white-flag outfit.

The VVA is responsible for a lot of people's misconceptions of Vietnam vets as drugged out, homeless losers. They can always produce a batch of drugged-out scraggly-bearded losers in camouflage on demand for a press event -- it's damn rare to find a veteran in the batch, let alone a Vietnam veteran.

Funny that none of the several much larger groups (American Legion, VFW, Amvets, DAV) were asked for their opinion. Maybe they were and it didn't fit into this opinion piece.

The idea that the active military would support surrender bunnies like Dean or a stands-for-nothing appeasenik like most of the rest of the Nine Dwarves (a term that is insulting to Micro-Americans) is a candidate for Pipe Dream of the Week. My advice to hopeful partisans like Scott Shepard of the AJC: "put down the bong and come out with your hands up!"

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Will someone ask the clown who wrote this article just what in the f*** Democriminals have done for America's fighting men and women?

This is pure progaganda. It must be tougher and tougher to be a Democrat in today's armed forces.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.