Voters Don't Feel Any Safer From Terrorism Due To Bush
by Steve
On a day when President Bush told voters in Iowa that they would be safer from terrorism if they reelected him, a Pew Center poll shows that 63% of those polled don’t think we are any safer after three years of Bush being in office than we were before 9/11.
(M)ost Americans continue to believe that the ability of terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S. remains at least as great as it was at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. A majority of Americans say terrorists have the same (39%) or a greater (24%) ability to launch another major attack in the U.S. today than was the case on Sept. 11, 2001. About a third of Americans (34%) say it is more difficult for terrorists to successfully attack the U.S. now. Opinion on this issue has changed little since 2002, when 39% said the terrorists' capabilities were about the same as at the time of Sept. 11 and 22% said they were greater.
The poll also showed that voters are not more worried about terrorism and in fact are less concerned about terrorism than they were in June.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted July 8-18 among 2,009 adults, shows that in spite of government warnings of a possible terrorist strike to undermine the election, public concern over terrorism has not increased recently. In fact, the percentage saying they are very worried over a new attack on the U.S. fell to 17% from 25% in June, and is on par with the level of concern expressed in multiple surveys conducted over the past year.
So what to do when voters don’t buy your claim that we are safer from terrorism as a result of your presidency and a 9/11 Commission report is about to come out highlighting what you didn’t do in the months leading up to the attack? Why, you use the media to hype up a nonstory about Sandy Berger and smear the Kerry campaign with it, hoping to plant the seed that the Kerry camp can’t be trusted with sensitive documents.
And if you don’t think it will work, watch your cable and broadcast TV news over the coming days and see what they cover. And then ask yourself:
If this is so bad, why hasn’t the FBI ever interviewed Berger six months after they searched his house?
Why does the FBI to this day say Berger is not the target of their investigation?
Why did House GOP members go on Fox News less than 12 hours after the story was leaked to the AP by an unnamed senior government official ready to imply that the Kerry camp was stealing these documents?
Rove is getting away with it again, and the only thing you can do is flame your media for not seeing this.