The GOP has made no bones about taking the gloves off after spending the last few months pretending to rise above the ankle-biting rhetoric about the Iraq War from the Democrats. After watching them slowly tip over the edge in the past month, openly calling for a recognition of defeat in Iraq and an immediate evacuation of troops from the region, the Republicans have opened up on Democratic Party leaders such as their chairman, their Congressional leadership, and their last Presidential nominee for their vacillating and pusillanimous responses. I covered most of this recent history in my last Daily Standard column, "Rally Round The (White) Flag, Boys!"

For their part, the Democrats loudly responded that they have been quoted out of context. Drudge now reports that the Republicans intend on fixing that problem with a few web ads, using the actual recorded statements of each to show the nation that the Democrats have given in to defeatism:

A Democratic strategist who had the web ad described to her said, “This is way over the top but we have no one to blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue to pander to the anti-war activists within our party.”

The web video advances the Republican contention that the Democrats only have a “retreat and defeat” message on the war in Iraq.

The video highlights the effect Democrats can have on the morale of U.S. soldiers.

One Republican strategist familiar with the ad said, “The Democrats, especially Howard Dean have a way of trying to turn the tables and say ‘that’s not what I meant’ – its just those ‘evil Republicans’ This video will make them crazy – it reinforces what they really believe with what they actually said – and that is devastating for the Democratic Party.”

This comes as Iraqis predict an even greater turnout for their elections next week, the first under their new constitution that will bring a regularly elected democratic nation to life where a genocidal tyranny existed less than three years earlier. Even the Sunnis predict a heavy turnout among Saddam's former elite, as they have belatedly realized that the armed struggle for supremacy over the Kurds and Shi'a had no chance of even getting off the ground, let alone achieving any success:

A top Sunni party official predicted yesterday that Sunnis would vote in large numbers in landmark elections next week in spite of a campaign of violence that intensified yesterday with more than 30 people killed in a bus bomb and the first reported killing of an American hostage in more than a year.

Ala'a Makky, a member of political bureau of the Sunni Islamic Party, said in an interview that he thinks the Sunni turnout will be much higher this time than in elections to an interim parliament in January. "I think most of the Iraqi population is now convinced that the elections and political solutions and reconciliation are the only solutions for the current problems," he said. "I think the Iraqi people will go ahead and vote in the elections, as it is so critical," he said. "I don't think [Zarqawi] can disrupt this process."

David Satterfield, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, also said yesterday that attempts to draw Sunnis into the political process were working. "Sunnis have come into the political process and they've come into it in a big way and they've come into it in an overwhelming way, in terms of numbers," he said during an telephone interview conducted from Washington. Having spent most the past year boycotting the political process, Sunnis "will be elected proportionate to their population," Mr. Satterfield predicted

The irony for the Democrats is that they have relied so heavily on making George Bush the focus of their electoral strategy that literally any good news from Iraq now completely discredits them. That's why people like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi have ratcheted up the hysteria in the last several weeks approaching the next election; if successful, it demonstrates that they had sold out the US for their own petty electoral interests. They need a failure in Iraq, thanks to the stupidity of their strategy through two electoral cycles. Instead of taking Joe Lieberman's advice in 2004 and accepting the Iraq War as a bipartisan effort, so that they could focus the election on domestic issues, the Democrats took up the International ANSWER banner and argued for the most radical positions available.

Now they want to bug out just before the Iraqis make it impossible for them to declare defeat any more, the last tactic open that will ensure a failure that they can then hang onto Bush. A few prominent Democrats have started to balk at this, notably Lieberman himself, Steny Hoyer, and even Hillary Clinton to a smaller degree. They understand that the Democrats have just launched themselves off the cliff, and the GOP is about to ensure that they can't reach back for a parachute for an easy landing.

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