IS THE ANTI-ANTI-COMMUNIST PARTY BECOMING THE ANTI-ANTI-TERROR PARTY?:

Key voter bloc looks beyond Bush: Arab Americans turning Democratic (David S. Broder, October 19, 2003, Washington Post)

An assemblage of politically active Arab Americans gave presidential candidate Howard Dean repeated ovations Saturday at the windup of a two-day meeting that marked a clear shift of allegiance from President Bush to his Democratic rivals.

Dean got by far the warmest response of any of the seven presidential hopefuls who addressed the 300 people attending the national leadership conference of the Arab American Institute, a Washington advocacy group.

But every Democratic speaker was applauded for criticizing the administration's policies in the Mideast and especially for the anti-terrorism tactics of Attorney General John Ashcroft, condemned by participants in a morning panel as targeting immigrants from Muslim countries and routinely violating their civil liberties. [...]

John Khamis, a San Jose GOP activist, said Bush's Mideast policy and Ashcroft's use of the Patriot Act means that "the attractive parts of the Republican agenda, our economic policies, are falling on deaf ears."

Asked if he thought Bush could regain support among Arab Americans before next year's election, Khamis said, "I don't know. It's going to take a real effort, and the odds are against him. I've had 30-year Republicans tell me they are re-registering as independents."

The economically and socially conservative policies that made the GOP attractive to Arab-Americans are, of course, unchanged. What has changed is that the President and his administration are waging a war on terror, at home and abroad. Implicit in the Democratic appeal to Arab-Americans must be the notion that they'll not pursue such anti-terror policies. That seems dangerous territory for the party to wander into.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 19, 2003 8:40 AM