http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401575.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=emailDemocrats Meander in a New New Direction
By Dana Milbank
Friday, September 15, 2006; A02
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the woman who will become speaker of the House if Democrats get lucky in November, began her weekly news conference yesterday holding up a red-white-and-blue brochure...Among the party's campaign slogans this year: "Culture of Corruption," "Culture of Cronyism," "Do-Nothing Congress," "Rubber-Stamp Congress," "Together, We Can Do Better," "Together, America Can Do Better" and, most recently, "Six for '06." For those keeping score at home, Democrats arrived at "New Direction" yesterday by downgrading one of the "Six for '06" issues (health care) and upgrading three others (honesty, civility and fiscal discipline), for a total of eight items on the contents page.
By contrast, Republicans have settled on a single, unofficial slogan, which essentially says: Vote Democrat and Die. And in politics, scary and scurrilous usually trumps elaborate and earnest -- something Pelosi has experienced firsthand in recent days.
Then came the questions. "This is now the third election in a row in which they've raised security issues just before the election," the first questioner said of the Republicans. "Why won't it work for them a third time?"
The charge enraged Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who had come to the floor to talk about education.
"America is not tired of fighting terrorism," she retorted. "America is tired of the wrongheaded and boneheaded leadership of the Republican Party that has sent $6.5 billion a month to Iraq when the front line was Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, that led this country to attack Saddam Hussein when we were attacked by Osama bin Laden."
She continued: "And Americans are most certainly tired of leadership that, despite documented mistake after mistake after mistake . . . never admit that they ever do anything wrong."
It was angry and raw. But it was a new direction.