A New Mandate for Bush
I am glad that Senator Kerry finally checked in with reality and conceded. Oh, how sweet it is!
There was some doom and gloom among some conservatives here in Seattle before the result was known. I told them that I shared some of their concerns, but that the President was more likely to win than not. They disagreed. There was a palpable defeatism.
That, I told them, was the problem with Left Coast conservatives. They generally tend to have good arguments (they would have to in order to survive in such an overwhelmingly hostile environment), BUT they tend to be defeatist because they are so used to losing. Well, I am glad that they were wrong.
It was a close-run thing as the Duke of Wellington might have put, but in the end, the President has a new mandate. He is the first president to win an outright popular majority vote in over a decade. He helped to increase the GOP leads in both the Senate and the House. In particular, the South was a complete, utter sweep for the GOP. For the foreseeable future, the GOP has a "governing majority" of the South, the Southwest, southern part of the Midwest and the Plains/interior Western states.
Now to the second-term agenda:
1. Ownership society -- this means permanent tax cuts, social security reform and healthcare reform.
2. Tort reform.
3. Concluding the Iraq war (continuing Iraqification of the war).
4. Confronting North Korea, a country which I predict will take a less belligerent stance.
5. Encouraging a people's revolution in Iran.
6. Re-building the alliances with some of the recalcitrant Western Europeans, some of who will grovel back to the United States.
There was some doom and gloom among some conservatives here in Seattle before the result was known. I told them that I shared some of their concerns, but that the President was more likely to win than not. They disagreed. There was a palpable defeatism.
That, I told them, was the problem with Left Coast conservatives. They generally tend to have good arguments (they would have to in order to survive in such an overwhelmingly hostile environment), BUT they tend to be defeatist because they are so used to losing. Well, I am glad that they were wrong.
It was a close-run thing as the Duke of Wellington might have put, but in the end, the President has a new mandate. He is the first president to win an outright popular majority vote in over a decade. He helped to increase the GOP leads in both the Senate and the House. In particular, the South was a complete, utter sweep for the GOP. For the foreseeable future, the GOP has a "governing majority" of the South, the Southwest, southern part of the Midwest and the Plains/interior Western states.
Now to the second-term agenda:
1. Ownership society -- this means permanent tax cuts, social security reform and healthcare reform.
2. Tort reform.
3. Concluding the Iraq war (continuing Iraqification of the war).
4. Confronting North Korea, a country which I predict will take a less belligerent stance.
5. Encouraging a people's revolution in Iran.
6. Re-building the alliances with some of the recalcitrant Western Europeans, some of who will grovel back to the United States.
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James,
Outstanding commentary as usual.
I would add one thing about the President’s coming agenda…you may have touched on it with your comment about Tort reform. But specifically the federal courts. Thomas or Scalia elevated to Chief Justice. Delicious. And all of those other fine conservative minds waiting for the call.
But I would like to address your comment about the election being a close thing. We all must kust keep in mind some facts about the President’s victory.
For the last 3 ½ years he has been savaged by the main stream media (MSM), i.e. network TV, plus CNN, MSNBC plus most of the print media. Evan Thomas of Newsweek proclaimed, about 2 months ago, that the MSM would give 15 percentage points to Kerry. Perhaps they did … but what good did it do him. This viciousness increased over the last 8 months: George Bush is an inarticulate moron, he was compared to Hitler, a book was written pondering the possibilities of his assassination, he is turning America into a fascist state, and on and on. George Soros reportedly spent $17,000,000 of his own money to defeat George Bush, Michael Moore and his execrable documentary? What more can be said? Even thoughtful liberals (e.g. Christopher Hitchens) reviewed it in the most derogatory way by calling it nothing more than 102 minutes of lies. The celebrities of stage and screen did all they could with their time and money to defeat George Bush. Most of them have stunning beauty and awesome talent … and brains the size of peanuts. Don’t listen to what they say but actually read what they say. You will come away from reading their words saying “Huh???” And all this time John Kerry got a pass, from the MSM, on virtually every thing he or his minions did.
A personal digression. Last February Sarah and I were invited to a pre-Iowa Caucus discussion group with Sarah’s book club. Sarah warned me that the book club members and their spouses were all die-hard liberals. This social gathering actually turned into 2 hours of Bush-hating denunciations. I of course am not one to back down from a fight (and I must tell you I was more than up to the task of kicking the butts of every one of the white-wine-sipping-pencil-necked-drips and their wives.) Anyway at the end as we were living I made one final announcement. I told them. “For this entire night you have done nothing but savage the President. Not a single one of you said anything to the effect: ‘I like what Kerry has to say about this’ or ‘I like Lieberman’s policy on this issue’ or ‘Dean is right about this’ or even ‘I like what my party, the Democrat party, has to say on this issue.’ Nope, everything you folks said tonight could be reduced to these four words: ‘I hate George Bush.’ That is not a winning agenda. You are going to lose in November and you will lose big.”
CBS tried its best to throw the election Kerry’s way in the final weeks by publicizing fraudulent National Guard records. CBS, Dan Rather and the most die-hard Bush-haters may be the only people left in the universe who refuse to acknowledge the fraudulence of those documents. Then a week before the election the New York Times and 60 Minutes conspired to publish, the Sunday before the election, fraudulent documents concerning the missing 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq. The New York Times (in an act of treachery against their co-conspirator) jumped the gun and published the documents the Wednesday before the election. Fortunately for 60 Minutes this allowed all the eggs and tomatoes to be aimed at The New York Times when that story was shown to be the fraud that it was and fizzled into nothing.
And speaking of Iraq you would think that nothing good is going on over there. That belief is absolute nonsense. It would take more time than I have today to describe the miracle of what is happening over there.
Then consider the scare tactics of: George Bush has a secret plan to reinstitute the DRAFT!!!! A tactic meant only to frighten draft age young people and their parents. There will be no draft. There never was going to be a draft, primarily because the Defense Department absolutely does not want a draft.
Then we are deluged with stories that George Bush has a secret plan to do away with Social Security … yada yada yada.
You can put money on this, in the coming weeks and months, you will begin to hear that actually there are many good things happening in Iraq and oh yeah the U.S. economy is actually doing quite well and other than the media and governing elite in Europe and elsewhere in the world, Americans and America are admired and liked. [But personally I don’t really give a damn. If it were up to me, my diplomatic policy would be that any country which didn’t speak kindly about the United States would immediately be removed from the “APPROVED LIST OF FOREIGN AID RECIPIENTS”. Additionally every 10 years or so I would pick some shitty, dictator-run country in the world, (there are plenty of them) throw them against the wall, kick ‘em in the ass and Stooge Slap them and then announce to the rest world: “Don’t fuck with us!”]
Fortunately because of talk radio, the blogosphere (like your fine blog ... is that pandering to the new media???) and to a lesser extent Fox News the MSM is on a downward curve…they are like Old Europe…and don’t even know it.
No, James when you consider all of this, President Bush’s victory was stunning and overwhelming.
Shack! Out!
Jack Else
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Posted by
Anonymous |
4/11/04 09:29
Jack:
For me, what the election proved was that your average "Bubba" with guns and pickup trucks, despite the overwhelming "ABB" campaign by the mainstream media, still made the right choice.
It reinforces my faith in the commonsense decision-making ability of the often snidely described (by elites) "common man" (and woman).
James
Posted by
James J. Na |
5/11/04 00:19