The Moderate Voice Gets Immoderate

Joe Gandelman, the Moderate Voice, is a veteran journalist and an all-round nice guy as well as a quintessential smart-thinking centrist - so when he gets his rant on about Rummie and the ultra-right's namecalling, suggesting that everyone who doesn't agree with them is a traitor and enabler of terrorists, maybe it's time they started listening.

There are some voters like yours truly who have been all over the place politically and been in both parties. We now don't belong to any party and will vote for a candidate based on ideas an policies — not just because they have a D or an R in front of them. And we vote every single time. In every single election. And, noooo, because we are independents doesn't mean we aren't passionate about issues.

We went along with the administration on the war, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but have since seen them discard a line, earlier justification or argument and when it turned out to be false or didn't work, then offered new one and then insist like what was said before or implied wasn't said or implied. Problems: (a) a lot of the earlier comments are immortalized on video (b) we're not bell peppers at Stop & Shop.

Many of us have do not agree with those who seek an immediate pullout but we have serious questions about the way the war is being run and what kind of plan there is in place to achieve goals and eventually leave. The administration gives us few if any answers — except more slash and burn demonization of those who ask questions and don't pledge total loyalty to place their trust in The People In Charge.

When we see those on the left or right who have questions about policies...and us also us, by implication ...being told that if we were adults in the 1940s would have let Hitler have his way, we then begin to write off the words of those whose mouths seemingly cannot debate issues without sneeringly discrediting those in a democracy who have every RIGHT to DEMAND answers or changes in policies.

Accusing opponents of being isolationists (even if they're not) or being soft on fascism (even if they're not) has worked before. And so it's being used as an election year tool again — to once again divide the United States in order to arouse passions of hate and concern in the GOP base so the base will go to the polls in droves 2006 to checkmate the portrayal and characterization of the administration's critics. The portrayal offered by the administration.

But this year many independents, independent-minded Democrats and even independent-minded Repubicans may think: Divided government is what's needed. And maybe votes cast in 2006 should be towards that end.

Donald Rumsfeld has been in high White House posts for many years in various administrations. He KNOWS how to put a sentence together.

He KNOWS what he said and what he meant. The political technique of taking some of it back later and letting the original allegation hang out there is older than Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (well, perhaps not that old..).

Many of us independent voters — even many of us who supported the war — know what Rumsfeld really meant.

And. come November, many of us independent voters will likely vote accordingly.

Americans are sick of being afraid of fear itself and sick of the party that seems to have that fear as its only real weapon against its' opponents.