"Both parties recruiting veterans to run for House in 2014" by Kevin Freking | Associated Press, November 30, 2013
WASHINGTON — When he meets voters in Pennsylvania’s Eighth Congressional District, former Army Ranger Kevin Strouse recounts how he helped clear a city block in Iraq during the rescue of prisoner of war Jessica Lynch in 2003. The story is meant to show his experience working with others to accomplish a goal.
Which is great, but it is well-known that the rescue story was a concocted lie by the Pentagon for propaganda purposes. The truth is the U.S. came and got her from an Iraqi hospital where she was treated.
‘‘In the military, it’s always a team effort,’’ said Strouse, who completed three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq and now is running as a Democrat, hoping to unseat GOP Representative Mike Fitzpatrick next year. “There’s a hierarchy, but things get done because people work together.’’
Just ignore the sexual assault and rape problems in the military.
In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally is putting her military service at the forefront of her second congressional campaign and emphasizing what she calls the Air Force’s core values.
‘‘Service before self, integrity, and excellence in all we do,’’ said McSally, the first woman in US history to command a fighter squadron in combat. ‘‘And those are the character traits that are sorely lacking’’ in Washington.
This country and it's political system are too far gone in militarism. May it implode before it destroys the world.
She narrowly lost last year to Ron Barber, a former aide to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who represented a Tucson-area district until she was wounded during a mass shooting in 2011.
I could find the link, but why bother?
Strouse and McSally are among more than a dozen veterans recruited to run for the House in 2014. Both parties have sought out candidates whose records allow them to appear to be antidotes to the partisan, gridlocked Washington. Each side hopes its challengers can run effectively against incumbents inextricably linked to a capital that, polls show, the public detests.
Doesn't matter which party, and really doesn't matter who sits in what chair after the campaign music.
Operatives say veterans can capitalize on the public’s high regard for military service and the record-low confidence it has in Congress.
What’s not lost on the parties is that there are many potential candidates to choose from, including those with long careers in the armed forces, now that thousands more veterans are returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq.
With all their limbs, hopefully, and no PTSD.
In House races expected to be the most competitive, Democrats are pushing eight challengers who either served in the military or continue to do so through the National Guard or Reserves; the GOP champions five veterans. Other veterans are in races that are not top targets on the national parties’ lists of competitive races.
Democrats need a net gain of 17 seats to seize control of the House.
Oh, they would "seize" control, huh?
Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, predicts that the October government shutdown will make a veteran’s service more compelling.
Poetic irony there.
‘‘They are the perfect contrast to a do-nothing member of Congress who is willing to shut down the government versus a veteran who devoted his or her life to serving their country,’’ Israel said.
Or the agenda of empire for EUSrael.
Among the Democratic Party’s top candidates with military service are Suzanne Patrick in Virginia’s defense-heavy Second Congressional District, Jerry Cannon in Michigan’s rural First Congressional District, and Strouse in Pennsylvania. Patrick and Cannon are running in Republican-leaning districts.
Patrick, a deputy undersecretary of defense under President George W. Bush, is portraying herself as above the political fray, a common strategy for veteran candidates.
‘‘We need more value-based problem-solving and the kind of core values the military represents, and quite honestly less politics,’’ says Patrick, whose district has the country’s highest concentration of veterans.
Republicans say they are attempting to recruit the best candidates for congressional districts, period. But they acknowledge that veterans have a strong story to offer voters.
‘‘There’s a certain level of trustworthiness when you have somebody who has a record of putting their life on the line to serve the American people,’’ said Andrea Bozek, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
McSally represents one of the GOP’s best opportunities to defeat an incumbent. Republicans are also looking to Wendy Rogers, who served 20 years in the Air Force, to take on Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District.
Analysts say that most congressional districts are so stacked toward one party or the other that incumbents generally face little threat of losing.
The gerrymandering secured lavish political lifestyles and the fighting is false when you consider the intere$ts that are still served.
Seth Lynn, who helps train veterans to run for political office through workshops and fellowships at George Washington University, said military success might lead some veterans to enter races that, in the end, just aren’t winnable.
‘‘There are a lot of people who succeed in the military and have done so against great odds,’’ Lynn said. ‘‘They look at a congressional race and say, ‘I can do this, too.’ ’’
I can't do this anymore.
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