I came across an amazing article by Politico about the support from military veterans the Republican party has enjoyed for the last thirty years. After analyzing the voter turnout information, there’s something funny going on with military voters: they’re moving Dem!
In the past two election cycles, Democrats have added ten new Democratic veterans to Congress. Last week, President-elect Barack Obama helped close the gap among military voters, winning 44 percent of veterans as opposed to John F. Kerry’s 41 percent in 2004.
To anyone who survived the bruising campaigns of the 1990’s, the thought that the Republican Party would surrender its stranglehold on military voters seems unbelievable. But the reality is that this image was never more than surface deep. All those political operatives who seemed to care so deeply about the heroic service of Republican nominees in 1992 and 1996 thought nothing of denigrating and attacking the service of Al Gore and John Kerry when it was the Republican candidate who had avoided serving in Vietnam.
But the really fascinating part is that military personnel haven’t always cared so much whether a candidate was a Republican or a Democrat. It’s a relatively recent trend that we’re seeing more service members and veterans voting for Republicans.
Republicans did not always have a lock on military voters. Prior to Vietnam, military service was seen as an obligation of all Americans – regardless of political affiliation or wealth. George H.W. Bush and John F. Kennedy were both sons of privileged, politically-connected families who served heroically in the military during World War II. Back then, this was seen as your duty as an American – and no political party could lay an exclusive claim to the flag.
The Republican strangle-hold on military voters is actually rooted in nothing more than a campaign strategy:
The GOP’s ability to market itself as the “Party of the Military” grew in large part from schisms in the electorate arising during the Vietnam era. For a generation, Republicans exploited George McGovern’s 1972 campaign as a means to brand Democrats as unpatriotic and weak on national security – never mind the fact that McGovern flew 35 bombing missions over Europe during WWII and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.
It was during these formative years as a budding Republican operative that Karl Rove learned the tools of the trade. Ironically, Rove avoided serving in Vietnam so he could sharpen the political skills he would later use to brand Al Gore a fraud, Max Cleland a coward, and John Kerry a traitor. Never mind that Al Gore enlisted in the Army; Max Cleland left three limbs on the battlefield; and John Kerry fought his way to three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star.
Senator McCain was the one true American hero of the Republican party. Something many of his counterparts could never lay claim to:
For all the GOP’s patriotic imagery and testosterone-infused rhetoric, the sad truth is that most of the current crop of Republican leaders – Rudy Giuliani; Mitt Romney; Newt Gingrich; Mitch McConnell; John Boehner; etc. – were all of age at the time of Vietnam but avoided serving in the military.
Just one more irony of the Republican party. But at this point, is it really any suprise?
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