Columnist Benjamin Grove: Republicans keep focus on war against terrorism

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 4:03 a.m.

THE REPUBLICAN ROMP on Nov. 5 is still conversation fodder in the nation's capital, where pundits continue to gobble up Election Day leftovers.

Conservative editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, said it was telling that the new book "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward was a top seller and that Al Gore's book "Joined at the Heart" is barely moving.

That's because voters are focused on the war on terrorism and Iraq, so they turned to the GOP, he said. The Democrats wasted their time trying to turn a spotlight on prescription drugs and corporate responsibility, Kristol said on a Sunday talk show last week.

"The key challenge for the Democratic Party is to take seriously the fact that we are engaged in a serious worldwide war, and come up with serious criticisms of the Bush administration on how they're fighting the war, not whining and complaining and carping."

But liberal Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen argued that Democrats can resonate with voters on their issues -- if they would just articulate clear, unapologetic stances.

"I can tell you what the Republican leaders care about," Quindlen wrote in the Nov. 18 edition. "With this election result, they will try to give estate-tax relief to the wealthy, to despoil the Alaskan wilderness by drilling for oil and to load the federal bench with judges who approve of the death penalty and are hostile to abortion. By contrast, I scarcely know where my own party stands any longer."

Much has been written about Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who will become the House majority leader when Congress reconvenes in January. I dug out a Washington Post Magazine profile of him from May 2001 that I had saved because it was a nice piece of reporting and writing. Nearly 10,000 words, the Peter Perl story unraveled the threads that, when woven together, made up the then-House majority whip.

A few highlights:

Meet the new leader of your House of Representatives.

Journalists in Washington are engaging in all sorts of freedom-of-information battles with the Bush administration and federal departments amid the government's emerging strategy on the war on terror and the establishment of the new Homeland Security Department. But reporters still had plenty to be thankful for this year.

In Nigeria, a northern state issued a fatwa (a Muslim edict) calling for the death of a young fashion journalist whose newspaper story on the Miss World pageant enraged many of the nation's Muslims and sparked deadly rioting.

The nation's top Islamic body urged Muslims to ignore the edict, but it was a sharp reminder that the United States, despite minor First Amendment setbacks, still values and protects freedom of the press.