makkun:
I understand the point you are trying to make now. Yes, I agree they sure do have a right to lobby their interests.
[quote]randman wrote:
Testy1 wrote:
Because the majority are sheeple led by one or two issues that are important to their own little world. How ironic it will be when their 15 year old kids get drafted 3 years from now because we still won’t have an exit strategy.
That’s a pretty simplified view of things. I basically had three choices on the ballot. And yes, usually there are two or three main issues that drives people to vote for one candidate or another. If I could find a candidate that believed in everything that I believed in I’d be ecstatic but I haven’t found that nirvana yet.
So I voted on three or four main issues that conservatives stood for, I guess that makes me a sheeple. Did you even vote? And if you did, did you agree with everything your candidate stood for? Yes? Well, then you’re brainwashed. No? Then you’re one of the sheeple just like us. Nice intelligent attack by you. Try again.[/quote]
Yes, I voted two weeks ago by absentee. I have voted in every election since 84.
No, I didn’t agree with everything Kerry stands for. I didn’t even particularly like my options. However, I did disagree with most things GB stands for.
Let me clarify the sheeple comment.
I believe that the majority vote based on what will affect their immediate world.
That people will vote based on a tax cut without regard to whose children are going to pay for it. Or, that people will want to wage war without regard to whose children are going to fight it.
Oh, and by reading some of your previous posts I see that the intelligence of others should be the least of your worries.
Testy 1:
Would you mind clarifying one particular statement of yours: “People will vote based on a tax cut without regard to whose children are going to pay for it.”
Is this about your concern for the deficit, or did you mean something else?
Interesting factoid: Bush got 23% of the gay vote, the same percentage he got in '00.
http://www.washblade.com/blog/index.cfm?blog_id=155
I guess those must have been stupid, evangelical, self-hating (and self-identifying) gays?
Or perhaps they aren’t worried about being oppressed…
Hmm. I wonder how that fact will be spun – what do you think Zeb?
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Just in case you missed it, Bush won the popular vote by nearly 4 million votes.
That is not a 50-50 split.
Hate to state the obvious.[/quote]
Gee 51% to 49% is pretty darn close to 50-50, no? Hate to state the obvious…
BTW, Bush got the most votes ever b/c the more people voted. Every year our population goes up as well so there will always be some trend towards more votes. He obviously is NOT a “popular” president. Barely more than half the people in the nation (and I mean BARELY) approve.
[quote]Superman wrote:
This election just proved more to me why the american people are the dumbest in the free world.
How many of you guys work that voted for bush. Congrats, you just made your life harder.
How many are making more then 300k a year? Didn’t think so, great for us “working americans”.
Use creatine, probably won’t in the next four years.
and gay marriage? All the “christians” on hear are full of shit. Does the bible preach thou shall not kill? How many scriptures in the bible are against killing, and how many are against homosexuality? Do you even know?? Did you even take into account voting for a man responsible for DEATHS, innocent or guilty? No, because like our president, you are full of shit.
Not to mention bush knew about 9/11, he knew about what WAS’nt in iraq, and yet he is still in iraq policing the world. During 9/11 the fbi was working on a case of a up-class whore house in st louis instead of the taliban. His moto should have been “We found the whores in 2004.”
[/quote]
WHAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAAHAAAA!
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
[quote]neilbudge wrote:
Nate Dogg,
First, I agree that in the case where a mother’s life is at risk, abortion should be allowed. Whether or not this should extend to the case of rape, I’m not certain. However, the vast majority of abortions do not fall under these situations. Many girls use this as an easy way out of a bad decision. Taking away another life because of a bad decision is no excuse to take a life. That is what we are dealing with in the vast majority of the cases.[/quote]
I completely understand this point of view. However, I still feel that even if these girls become pregnant, they should have the option to have an abortion if they feel it’s best (for them and their situation). Remember, many young girls who become pregnant (even older women), may have had their birth control fail on them. Those things happen. So you can say, “Well, they should not have been having sex in the first place.” And sure, abstinence should always be taught, but the reality is that people of all ages are going to have sex, and they should have the option of being taught safe sex. And for those where even condoms or other birth control methods fail, they should still have options available to them. I don’t think it’s fair to take that away.
I’m sorry, but if my girlfriend became pregnant, abortion would be a viable option (and one I would support). For I am not ready to have a child (neither is she). You may counter that with something about not having sex or using multiple methods, but the reality is that it could happen (to anyone). And in this case, I feel that the woman should have all options available to make a decision that best suits her and her life, even if that means aborting the baby.
We have different views on the matter. So it will always be an argument we can both have. It’s great that you feel that way. I just don’t want to see the government making laws that restrict those options. Whether you or someone else considers it murder, it’s still the mother’s choice, and I believe that her life comes first.
Think about the flip side. What if abortion is illegal and women still get pregnant and don’t want the baby for whatever reason. So they give birth (or try aborting the baby themselves through various methods), and give the child up for adoption. The child goes in and out of foster homes or maybe it is adopted by a loving family. But the reality is that there are many children without a loving home, who are homeless or in and out of foster homes, and many become the children who steal, cheat and end up in jail or become career criminals. It happens.
I’ve worked with the local Planned Parenthood. They do not do this and do give options and have counselors. Same goes for other organizations in this area that perform abortions. All have counselors that do go over the long-term effects and give other options.
I know people that have had an abortion. And for them, it was the best option, and they are glad that they chose abortion over having the child and putting it up for adoption or keeping it. There are many reasons why this was their best choice. The fact is that they had choices and made the one best suited for them.
[/quote]People don’t have a legal right to steal or commit murder. Does that take away from our liberties? Every country has to have rules. Our freedom of choice can not be endless. The justice system has been put in place to protect the innocent, don’t you think that a human life should be included in that? (exceptions excluded)
[/quote]
I understand your point, but I do not agree in this instance. It’s probably best to leave it at that. As I am leaving the political forum anyway and do not want to debate this for the next several months.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
Testy 1:
Would you mind clarifying one particular statement of yours: “People will vote based on a tax cut without regard to whose children are going to pay for it.”
Is this about your concern for the deficit, or did you mean something else?
[/quote]
Yes, sorry I wasn’t clearer. Everyone is happy to have an extra $500 dollars a year in their pocket (myself included).
However, I believe this to be incredibly short sighted. I realize it is the American way to run up a big bill and worry about how to pay for it later, (myself included) but someone has to pay for it eventually. It reminds me of a tree hugger saying, “We don’t own the planet, we borrow it from our kids”.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/16/attack/main509294.shtml
oh and
And i quote
“If the FBI can spend resources investigating whether there is prostitution in New Orleans, they ought to be able to find the resources to investigate what happened in this country prior to 9/11,” Sen. Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said in a news conference last week.
Now what the fuck your talking about before you try to insult me, at least do it properly…
[/quote]
(Former)Senator Daschle was asked to go back home to South Dakota! So obviously his points and opinions aren’t as respected or paid attention to. Quoting a loser in this election to back your points just doesn’t cut it.
Sorry.
B.
Back to the original topic of the thread, here’s a mainstream media “analysis” news story in the Wall Street Journal (remember, only the Opinion Page is conservative) taking a look at how the Republicans won the election:
Victory Suggests
Rightward Move
By the Electorate
Volunteers Followed Playbook
Focusing on the Faithful,
Like-Minded Democrats
Breaking Political Deadlock
By JACKIE CALMES and JOHN HARWOOD
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 4, 2004; Page A1
COLUMBUS, Ohio – At 11 a.m. on Election Day, software consultant Frank Stiles was still campaigning for George W. Bush. The campaign’s playbook told him what to do next: It was time to start “flushing.”
Mr. Stiles, a precinct captain in the conservative community of West Chester, led his small corps of fellow volunteers to the polling place. There, they pored over the just-posted list of who had voted and who hadn’t. Aiming to rack up a big Republican margin, the volunteers, many of them evangelical Christians who had been laboring on the Bush cause for months, found roughly 300 who hadn’t turned out yet and began phoning them to offer rides to the polls. When the votes of precinct 4-LL were tabulated last night, Mr. Bush had received 75% of the vote – and the decisive state of Ohio was in the Bush column.
That effort helps explain how President Bush’s campaign advisers pulled off what many politicians in both parties thought they couldn’t: a second term for a polarizing president at a time of economic anxiety and wartime crisis. They did it by doggedly pursuing a plan that some fellow Republicans doubted, one that centered on super-charging the party’s conservative base rather than banking on swing voters; picking off targeted slivers of traditional Democratic constituencies; and relying on volunteers to match or exceed the professional cadres mobilizing their Democratic opponents.
The result was a surprisingly comfortable popular-vote advantage of more than three million votes over Democratic challenger John Kerry, and just enough to win the decisive 20 electoral votes belonging to the Midwest battleground of Ohio. It made Mr. Bush, who took office after losing the popular vote four years ago, the first presidential candidate to exceed 50% of the popular vote since his father, George H.W. Bush, achieved that goal 16 years ago. Mr. Bush won just over 59 million votes, giving him 51% of the electorate.
Notwithstanding predictions of another 2000-style election dispute, the verdict by 114 million voters left no doubt. To the contrary, the depth of Republicans’ partywide victory even raised the possibility that Mr. Bush and his top strategist Karl Rove had nudged the nation out of its political deadlock toward a narrow but clear national Republican majority. It also suggested the country has moved to the right, making the Republican job easier.
Mr. Bush’s victory was the Republicans’ seventh in 10 presidential elections since the nation was cleaved by racial and cultural conflict in the late 1960s. His party held its majority in the House of Representatives for the fifth consecutive election. The victory also marked the third straight time Mr. Bush has prevailed in a national election. He defeated Al Gore in 2000, led his party to success in an unusual midterm election in 2002 in which the party holding the White House held its power in Congress, and now won his own re-election.
By sweeping Democratic-held seats in the Bush-friendly South, Republicans expanded their Senate majority by four seats to 55, giving the president increased maneuvering room to pursue his conservative domestic agenda on taxes, social policy, and entitlement reform.
Exit polls offered more evidence that the Republicans now have a larger ideological base than Democrats. Self-identified conservatives made up 34% of the electorate, up from 29% in 2000, compared to the 21% proportion of self-identified liberals. Helping the Bush team mobilize its forces were ballot issues in 11 states expressing opposition to gay marriage.
Their success confounded conventional analysis in a number of significant ways. Political professionals widely assumed that incumbents with approval ratings and poll scores below 50% will have a hard time winning since undecided voters typically break sharply toward a challenger.
Election exit polls showed that the 9% of voters who chose a candidate within the last three days tended to favor Mr. Kerry. But those who chose a candidate the previous week narrowly favored Mr. Bush, limiting the impact of late opinion shifts.
The president also proved he could make incremental progress among traditional Democratic constituencies, not by compromising his conservative policy ideas, but by riding currents of opinion within those constituencies that matched his own. Mr. Bush’s strong profile on terrorism, for example, narrowed the gender gap as “security moms” helped him run just four percentage points behind Mr. Kerry among women.
By demonstrating steadfast support for Israel, Mr. Bush edged up his share of the Jewish vote to 24% from 19% four years ago, according to exit polls. His longstanding appeals to Hispanics, on issues such as immigration, helped him carry 42% of their votes nationally – compared with 35% in 2000 – and a majority in Florida. That helped him achieve a comfortable victory in the critical battleground state.
Even among African-Americans, the Democratic Party’s strongest single constituency, Mr. Bush was able to use his conservative stance on social issues such as gay marriage to edge up his vote share to 11% from 8% four years ago. In Ohio’s decisive contest, Mr. Bush received an even more substantial 16% of the black vote.
Most importantly, the Bush campaign succeeded by bucking conventional doctrine that calls for general election candidates to run toward the political middle. Instead, it focused on swelling the conservative Republican base. Out-hustled by Democrats in voter mobilization in the closing days of the 2000 campaign, Mr. Rove has spent much of the last four years trying to figure out how to maximize the Republican turnout, especially among conservative Christians who turned out in disappointing numbers four years ago.
It paid off on Election Night. While Democrats boosted turnout among partisan faithful, Republicans outdid them by generating intense commitment. By transforming it into Election Day mobilization, the Bush team fulfilled its pre-election predictions of erasing the slight turnout edge that Democrats have held for the past several presidential elections. People who identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats each made up 37% of the electorate. Mr. Bush’s fervent backing produced a slightly higher level of partisan cohesion. Mr. Kerry drew an impressive 89% support among Democrats; Mr. Bush’s 93% from Republicans was even higher.
“I always thought love would trump hate,” says Bush strategist Matthew Dowd. Because it did, Mr. Bush’s 51%-48% popular vote edge precisely matched Mr. Dowd’s pre-election forecast, even as national polls pointed toward a much closer race.
“We were strategically able to change the composition of the electorate,” says Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. Mr. Mehlman cited the campaign’s success in registering and motivating Republican loyalists in fast-growing exurban and rural areas, which include counties surrounding Cincinnati in southern Ohio.
Perhaps the least surprised at the outcome were the ranks of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who had labored on President Bush’s behalf because of his appeal to their moral values, while their fellow Americans were debating Iraq and the economy.
“Whooopeeee!” e-mailed Lori Viars, a young mother in Warren County, an exploding exurban center northeast of Cincinnati. She spent much of this year registering voters and campaigning for President Bush and the marriage amendment to Ohio’s constitution.
Ms. Viars noted that “the local Democrats were more active than ever before,” just as they were nationally, as a result of ambitious efforts by the Kerry campaign and liberal interest groups including organized labor, feminists and environmentalists. But “morals and sanity prevailed,” she concluded.
Bush supporters from Warren County enlarged the president’s 2000 vote margin by nearly 12,000 votes as he defeated Mr. Kerry by a margin of more than two to one. In nearby Butler County, where Mr. Stiles did his handiwork, Mr. Bush’s margin swelled by another 12,000. Mr. Bush held a statewide lead of around 137,000 when he claimed victory yesterday.
Southwestern Ohio is a fast-growing, affluent area, with high-dollar subdivisions sprouting from former farms. While Democrats touted their efforts to register youthful first-time voters, Mr. Stiles’s fellow volunteers Frank and Dorcas York were doing the same thing. The day after one neighbor moved in, Mr. York showed up like the Republican Party’s Welcome Wagon. Voters were motivated not only by the prospect of re-electing Mr. Bush but also by the proposed amendment against same-sex marriage or civil unions. “It helped a lot,” says Mr. York.
Indeed, the outcome suggested that Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who is gay, was correct in arguing months ago that gay-rights activists were over-reaching by pushing for legal acceptance of gay marriages, arguing that the nation’s mainstream wasn’t yet ready to embrace the idea.
Mr. York says he was told that the 880 voter sign-ups he recorded constituted a record for Ohio. Once the deadline to register had passed, the campaign had more work for him.
Mr. York’s next job was working on absentee voters, going door-to-door and giving ballot applications to anyone who wanted them. He then carried the completed forms to party headquarters in Butler County or to the office of Republican Rep. John Boehner. There, they were photocopied for the party’s contact list.
Ten days before the election, Mr. York was assigned to “lit drops.” He estimates “conservatively” that he left pro-Bush literature at 3,000 homes in the final days.
“I was pretty much on my own those last two weeks, every day, seven days a week,” he says. He no longer needed the exercise bike at home. “There’d be lots of nights I’d have aches and pains” from the walking. “But you learn to live with it.”
The Yorks attended three rallies featuring either President Bush or Vice President Cheney, in their many trips through Ohio – once in Dayton, most recently in Cincinnati and at a huge rally near their home, at Voice of America Park in West Chester. At that rally, Mr. York was assigned to an area designated for supporters to meet the president, but campaign scheduling prevented the encounter.
He was most effusive about a rally just last Saturday that featured Bush “surrogates,” including television pundits Sean Hannity and Bill Bennett and former Reagan administration aide Oliver North, which was designed to fire up faithful conservatives in the nearby Hamilton County community of Blue Ash. “That rally pumped me up even more,” he says.
The Yorks had voted by absentee ballot – as all Bush volunteers were directed to do – in order that they would be at the campaign’s disposal on Election Day.
Nov. 2 started with a prayer meeting by a flag pole at their church. For the next three hours, they stood outside the polling place where residents from their precinct and three others were voting, handing out Republican “slate cards” listing the party’s candidates.
At 11 a.m., the polling place posted a list of those who had and hadn’t voted. The Yorks and Mr. Stiles took down the names of those still out. The Yorks dashed home where four other volunteers were waiting with cell phones to help make calls. Mr. Stiles distributed other names and numbers to neighbors.
They phoned voters until the next list was posted at 4 p.m. Mrs. York says the team then decided “that people had been bugged enough.” Callers were expressing so much irritation that the volunteers decided to hold off making calls.
As word got out that the exit polls favored Mr. Kerry, Mr. York says he became a little concerned. "But I had been with so many people and groups that I thought, ‘this can’t be right.’ "
They had planned to watch returns at a local reception hall with other Republicans “but we were whooped,” Mr. York says. The couple went home and watched the returns on television. They went to bed at 3 a.m. yesterday, once they felt confident that Ohio would go for the president
[quote]Testy1 wrote:
ZEB wrote:
Testy 1:
Would you mind clarifying one particular statement of yours: “People will vote based on a tax cut without regard to whose children are going to pay for it.”
Is this about your concern for the deficit, or did you mean something else?
Yes, sorry I wasn’t clearer. Everyone is happy to have an extra $500 dollars a year in their pocket (myself included).
However, I believe this to be incredibly short sighted. I realize it is the American way to run up a big bill and worry about how to pay for it later, (myself included) but someone has to pay for it eventually. It reminds me of a tree hugger saying, “We don’t own the planet, we borrow it from our kids”.[/quote]
It may be $500 dollars for you but its thousands of dollars for others. It’s easy to have this point of view when it is only $500. It’s amazing how your view begins to change the more money you start making.
Tax cuts and federal deficits are not directly correlated. Spending beyond ones means (goverment included) and the subsequent defecit are directly correlated. In this, I admit the Bush administration has failed and needs to fix by significantly reducing pork barrel spending.
Some more exit-poll analysis:
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_11_04_corner-archive.asp#045242
ISSUES IN OUR DAILY LIVES [John Hood]
Jonah?s earlier post about how the news media are spinning the election results is right on the money. The talking-head class misread the election, can?t understand it, and is trying desperately to spin the results in ways that don?t invalidate their preconceived, and erroneous, assumptions about the contest.
I had a similar thought today when I noticed a consistent them in the media chatter: Bush?s win was all about gay marriage. That?s a dramatic overstatement: it was partly about gay marriage, and more generally about moral and cultural issues. But rather than attempting to comprehend the results and explain their various layers, the commentators are latching onto the gay-marriage them because 1) they find it surprising that voters care about such issues, which makes it news; 2) they view social conservatives as a fascinating foreign culture, much like the lost tribes of Borneo; and 3) it serves to invalidate the Bush agenda on taxes, Social Security, and the war. After all, his only mandate was against same-sex marriage.
They?re missing the point that political parties are coalitions. Individuals and groups within the coalition bring different things to the table, including different priorities and views. Without a broad coalition, a political party is not competitive.
Based on the exit polls, it is just as legitimate to say that Bush?s edge on taxes was the difference in the popular vote ? if you multiply the share of voters citing taxes as the number-one issue by the preference for the Republican, you get about 3 percent. It is also just as legitimate to say that education and health care were the winning issues for Bush, since if you work the math out the Bush voters picking these two issues as top priorities add up to about 3 percent.
So it was No Child Left Behind and Health Savings Accounts that won the election for Bush!
Another bias in the exit-poll data is that the issues of terrorism and the war in Iraq are reported as separate priorities for voters. Well, that?s what many Democrats and the media believe, but most voters (55 percent) said that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, so for them the two categories aren?t separate. If you add the two together, the issue of national security was by far the most important in the 2004 race ? the choice of one-third of the electorate ? and Bush won a clear, though not overwhelming, majority there.
It turns out that you need every slice of a pie to make it round. It doesn?t matter how wide or narrow the slice is.
Also, looking at the voting by income level, Bush carried the middle-class voters:
Kerry took voters with incomes up to $50K, with decreasing percentages as you move up:
Under $15K (8% of votes cast) voted Kerry 63%, Bush 36%
Between $15K and $30K (15% of votes cast) voted Kerry 57%, Bush 42%
Between $30K and $50K (22% of votes cast) voted Kerry 51%, Bush 49%
Between $50K and $75K (23% of votes cast) voted Bush 56%, Kerry 43%
Between $75K and $100K (14% of votes cast) voted Bush 55%, Kerry 44%
Between $100K and $150K (11% of votes cast) voted Bush 57%, Kerry 43%
Between $150K and $200K (4% of votes cast) voted Bush 58%, Kerry 42%
Over 200K (3% of votes cast) voted Bush 63%, Kerry 35% (and Nader 1% – the only group in which Nader got an identifiable percentage)
The constitution only prohibits the establishment of a national religion or a state religion. Not a single item that says government and religion must be seperate and that the government can have no involvement in religion or moral issues. Read the writings of the founding fathers and you will find that they strongly believed in our elected leaders having strong religious faith.
Testy 1:
I think government needs to be shrunk. This in turn would lower our tax bill.
[quote]greatgro wrote:
BTW, Bush got the most votes ever b/c the more people voted. Every year our population goes up as well so there will always be some trend towards more votes. He obviously is NOT a “popular” president. Barely more than half the people in the nation (and I mean BARELY) approve.
[/quote]
Clinton never even got half of the people to vote for him, so Bush is more popular than Clinton ever was by that standard.
bush also got the greatest percentage of the eligible electorate since 1968…
This election was a “referendum” on the “black hole” which IS liberalism.
Zell Miller’s speech at the convention was big – I think it really helped to fire up the base and win over some socially conservative Democrats.
Here’s an article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which Zell gives his take on the election:
MY VIEW
I tried to tell you . . .
Democrats repel voters, who put faith in freedom
Published on: 11/04/04
America’s faith in freedom has been reaffirmed. With the re-election of President Bush, America recommitted itself once again to expanding freedom and promoting liberty. Only the 1864 re-election of Abraham Lincoln, the 1944 re-election of Franklin Roosevelt and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan rival this victory as milestones in the preservation of our security by the advancement of freedom.
This election validated not just freedom, but also the faith our Founding Fathers placed in average folks to navigate the course of this great nation. By weighing the greatest issues at the gravest times and choosing our path, ordinary people have again accomplished extraordinary things. With courage and caution, rather than fear and timidity, the voters chose a path to ensure others would enjoy the same freedom to set their own path.
This election outcome should have been implausible, if not impossible. With a litany of complaints ? bad economy, bad deficit, bad foreign war, bad gas prices ? amplified by a national media that discarded any pretense of neutrality, a national opposition party should have won this election.
But the Democratic Party is no longer a national party. As difficult as the challenges are ? both real and fabricated ? Democrats offered no solution that was either believable or acceptable to vast regions of America.
Tax increases to grow the economy are not a solution that is believable or acceptable. Democratic promises of fiscal responsibility are unbelievable in the face of massive new spending promises. A foreign policy based on the strength of “allies” such as France is unacceptable. A strong national defense policy is just not believable coming from a candidate who built a career as an anti-war veteran, an anti-military candidate and an anti-action senator.
Democratic Party policies haven’t sold in large sections of America in decades, and the only success of Democrats in presidential elections for 40 years was when they pitched themselves as pro-growth, low-tax, strong-defense, fiscally responsible, values-oriented candidates.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton hummed the tune but never really sang the song, and that’s why Democrat prospects have gone south in the South. In 1980, the South had 20 Democrats and just six Republicans in the Senate. As recently as 1994, the Senate had 17 Democrats and nine Republicans from the South.
A decade later, the number had reversed to 17 Republicans and nine Democrats. With this election, it is 22 Republicans and just four Democrats from the South.
When will national Democrats sober up and admit that that dog won’t hunt? Secular socialism, heavy taxes, big spending, weak defense, limitless lawsuits and heavy regulation ? that pack of beagles hasn’t caught a rabbit in the South or Midwest in years.
The most recent failed nominee for president stands as proof that the national Democratic Party will continue to dwindle. The South has gone from just one-fourth of the Electoral College in 1960 to almost a third today.
To put this in perspective, that gain is equal to all the electoral votes in Ohio. Yet there was not a single Southern state where John Kerry had any real chance. Would anyone like to place bets on the electoral strength of the South by 2012? Maybe they should tax stupidity.
When you write off centrist and conservative policies that reflect the will of people in the South and Midwest, you write off the South and Midwest. Democrats have never learned from the second or third or fifth kick of a mule. They continue to change only the makeup on, rather than makeup of, the Democrat Party.
And so we have a realignment election. For the first time, in an “us vs. them” election and in the toughest of situations, Republicans have been re-elected to the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Confronting an opposition that can win a divided electorate in the worst of times and that has a growing electoral base, the national Democratic Party has a choice: continue down this path toward irrelevance or reverse course. As the last Truman Democrat, I hope my party makes the right choice but know I will not be allowed to be part of it. Such is the price you pay when you love your nation more than your party.
And so while I retire with little hope for the near-term viability of the party I’ve spent my life building, I retire with a quiet satisfaction that after witnessing the struggle of democracy over communism and fascism, the fear I once held that America might not rise to meet this new challenge of terrorism has vanished like a fog under the radiance of a new dawn. While the threat is still real, the shadow looming across a promising future is gone.
And the credit for that goes to one man. Like the last lion of England, Winston Churchill, George W. Bush has stood alone and risked all to give the world a new, clearer path to the advancement of freedom.
Abraham Lincoln, in his second annual message to Congress, stated: “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom for the free ? honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.”
George Bush has injected into a region of enslavement an incurable dose of freedom, and thus nobly saved that “last, best hope of earth” ? free men.
? Zell Miller is Georgia’s Democratic U.S. senator.
After all the seething rage, hate, mean spirited name calling,insults etc that were hurled on President Bush;…GOD got it right as usual!