GOP steps up defense of Bush

Republicans’ defense of President Bush and the war in Iraq stiffened yesterday as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Democrats are accusing the president of being a traitor.

“If you take their comments to their logical conclusion, they’re essentially calling our commander in chief Benedict Arnold,” Mr. DeLay, Texas Republican, told the College Republicans at their biennial national convention in the District.

“Ridiculous as it sounds, the logical extension of the Democrat leadership’s assertion is that President Bush is an international war criminal. If we are to take this nonsense seriously, that is how out of control the Democrats’ rhetoric has become.”

But Mr. DeLay said Democrats haven’t explicitly made those charges because they themselves don’t believe them.

“The Democrats’ accusations aren’t meant to be taken seriously. Because they’re unserious people,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a global conflict between good and evil, and they’re in the middle of a Michael Dukakis look-alike contest.”

In New York, new Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Democrats’ sole strategy is to try to weaken the president, though they present no credible alternative.

“Their overheated rhetoric toward the president, bandying about words like ‘lying,’ ‘madman’ and, yes, ‘impeachment,’ is designed to distract from the central fact that their policies would not make us safer in the world, and President Bush’s do,” said Mr. Gillespie, who was confirmed yesterday as party chairman.

Republicans are making a concerted effort to push back after nearly a month of Democratic challenges to the legitimacy of the war in Iraq.

On Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, laid out part of the case the administration relied upon to decide Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a threat that had to be removed.

And as Congress prepares for its summer recess, Republicans are going home with talking points to help put the entire Iraqi situation in focus.

Democrats aren’t backing down, and are in fact using Iraq to challenge the president on his leadership all around — an area where, to date, American voters have rated Mr. Bush highly.

“We all know that President Bush misled the American people on the rationale for war with Iraq. We now know that the Niger uranium claim was discredited, that evidence regarding aluminum tubes was highly questionable, and that the link to al Qaeda was virtually nonexistent,” presidential contender and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said yesterday while campaigning in Iowa.

Mr. Dean said those questions about the president’s credibility on the war should now be broadened to include other administration priorities and accomplishments.

“This practice goes far beyond misleading the country and the world about the reasons for taking us to war in Iraq, this practice extends into the state of the nation’s economy, its environment, its schools and beyond,” he said.

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