Monthly Archives: November 2004

Dump Duhbya

Election Will Prompt Democratic Soul-Searching

Politics News Article | Reuters.com

It will not be an easy task. Defeated in the presidential election, the party that dominated U.S. politics from the 1930s until the 1990s also lost ground in both chambers of Congress and the Republicans retained control of most of the state governorships.

“I think this is a realigning election. The Democrats are going to have to get used to permanent minority status for a generation or two,” said Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. …

In many ways, the Democrats have become a coalition of minorities — blacks, homosexuals, Jews, the unmarried and the unreligious. Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove characterized the typical Democrat as “somebody with a doctorate … people who imbibed the values of the sixties and seventies and stuck with them.”

Yeah, those crazy sixties ideas like equality, justice, peace, love — what bunch of looney liberals! And, heck, we need to find a way to express ourselves more simply. mjh

TimesDispatch.com | Bush advances his agenda

A day after declaring victory in a hard-fought election, President Bush said at a news conference, “I’ll reach out to everyone who shares our goals,” adding that “I earned capital in this election, and I’m going to spend it.” …

Bush said he felt it was “necessary to move an agenda that I told the American people I would move,” adding: “When you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view.”

Stop the Tape: President Bush Has Learned About The Enemy, Declares: “I Meant What I Said”

See, to them, you have to understand, to many in Washington and the White House press corps, and many in the left in general, you say things to fool people.

You say things to avoid controversy or you say things to actually deceive people. But you never say what you mean. That’s a sign of weakness. That’s giving your intentions away. You don’t do that. You gotta fool people. You gotta lie to ’em. You gotta set ’em up. You gotta deceive ’em, and I think that’s why so many people have trouble understanding Bush.

Letters-to-the-Editor

Greetings from a Compassionate Conservatve

Please express my heartfelt thanks to Michael Moore for helping re-elect President Bush.

LS
Fort Worth, TX

Voting for Bush because of Michael Moore is like voting for Kerry because of Lush Limbaugh. If Moore or Limbaugh made up your mind, if *either* was your main motivation, maybe you really are a moron. Ask around.

What we learned is that if one party claims for itself *everything* that is good at the most basic and personal level (family, freedom, faith) while projecting onto the other party everything that is bad (weakness, duplicity, corruption), those who say they are good and their enemies are bad will persuade some people. The 55.5 Million who voted for Kerry were not persuaded. The 80 Million who did not vote may not have been persuaded. Three percent is a mandate for caution.

The Radical Right has hammered a wedge into the heart of the nation for at least 12 years (think Gingrich and the impeachment of Clinton) using some of the most incendiary language (think Limbaugh). Now, after a brutal campaign in which no one can think Bush/Cheney/Swiftvets took the high road, we’re all supposed to be nice again. You can show us how it’s done in two years. You reap what you sow.

peace, mjh

Published: Friday, November 12, 2004

Dump Duhbya

40 years of GOP presidents

Democrats must learn from loss By Matthew Miller

There are other lessons. Democrats may simply need to have a governor atop the ticket; a senator may never be marketable as an executive leader. Democrats sure need a good Southerner. But above all, Democrats need ideas.

Think about it. By 2008 we will have had 40 years of GOP presidents broken only by Southern governor Jimmy Carter (a post-Watergate fluke) and Southern governor Bill Clinton (a rare force of nature). During this time American politics have drifted dramatically to the right, to the point where Richard Nixon’s combined plans for universal health coverage and a minimum family income is now far too “liberal” for John Kerry to have supported in 2004.

Showing how progressive goals are consistent with American values, bolstering the party’s security agenda in an age of terror, reframing the language and means with which Democrats propose to solve the problems of ordinary Americans – all this, as with Clinton in 1992, will mean challenging some ancient doctrines and interest groups in order to reach out to more Americans with real answers.

It’s a tall order. And it’s hard to see how the current Democratic establishment – which, after all, has presided over these losses and the rightward drift of the country – is up to the task.

Forty years of Republican presidents and we’re not doing so bad. Much of the world hates us or thinks we’re insane. We’re headed towards bankruptcy. We’re ready to shred the Constitution. There’s a record to run on in 2008! mjh

Election

Looking on the Bright Side

Column:Bush term will shift U.S. left By Dustin Habermann

Kerry is as capitalist and authoritarian as any American president in the last 50 years despite Republican claims of his liberalness.

The truth is, the right has been winning for some time now, and that lie is a perfect example. After successfully taking over the Republican Party and polarizing the two available American political platforms, the lie has pulled the Democrats to the right in a frighteningly systematic manner. The Democratic primary of 2004 boasted only two candidates who could claim to be left-wingers. Kerry, of course, wasn’t one of them. …

Unfortunately, this election once again proves that attempting not to scare the center by denying our leftness just doesn’t work. Hiding behind a facade of centrism is just a denial of the fact that the center is already in the hands of the enemy. …

[Americans] need to see the neo-conservative agenda fail. They need to see their economy crumble. They need to see poor children starve. They need to see terrorists attacking us from all sides. They need to see their sons and daughters led into war after war. They need to see the skies blacken and the seas become poison. …

Who better to make a nation of progressives than Bush?

Letters-to-the-Editor

Everybody Knows Nihilists Vote Libertarian

Albuquerque Tribune Online
Trippin’ on their way toward Utopia, by Jeffry Gardner

[Liberals] revel in the knowledge that their youthful incivility and lawlessness has today become an accepted practice of the left when it wants something it can’t get at the polls or in the courts. …

Anyway, Chicago’s summer of ’68 is the perfect date and place to begin charting the demise of civility in our political process. That fiasco set the stage for Florida 2000 and – well, what we’ll witness in the weeks ahead, I’m sure. …

[I]t’s today’s American liberals who have made [liberalism] a bad word. Today liberal appears to represent nothing but nihilistic division and hypocrisy.

Somebody throw cold water on Jeffry Gardner — he’s having a flashback.

It is interesting that Gardner so resents those who demonstrated at the Democratic Convention in 1968. There’s very good reason to believe those young people contributed to Nixon’s two elections — the law of unintended consequences being what it is.

While we’re remembering the ‘class’ of Dick Nixon, who can forget he resigned in shame? It’s the easy defeat of the extremist Goldwater and liberal rejoicing at the downfall of the criminal Nixon that has powered the Radical Right for decades (Cheney and Rumsfeld worked for Nixon, learning from the master).

Now, you have your revenge. Don’t bother going back in time to fight — you’ve won right here and now. Enjoy it, just as the rest of us will enjoy the steady swing of the pendulum. And maybe another shameful resignation! mjh

Dump Duhbya

‘America is a conservative nation’

News > Politics — Faithful say their votes carried day” href=”http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20041104-9999-1n4faith.html”>SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Politics — Faithful say their votes carried day By Sandi Dolbee, UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR

“This is a great victory,” said Cass, who last summer left his East County church to lead the Center for Reclaiming America, a conservative Christian public activism arm of Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“It really is showing that America is a conservative nation and, unfortunately for those politicians on the other side of those issues, it’s not going to go well for them for a long time,” he said. …

“The religious right is already crowing about providing Bush’s margin of victory,” Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement issued yesterday.

“The movement’s leaders expect to be handsomely rewarded for that,” he added, noting that seats on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to open up during Bush’s second term. “The culture war may go nuclear.”

Social conservatives score victories, plan more impact by Matt Stearns and Charles Homans, Knight Ridder Newspapers

“This country was based on biblical principles,” said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, applauding what she called the “pro-life, pro-family” Election Day victories. “This is a sign of what America used to be, and that we’re going back to where we were.” …

The U.S. Senate tilted sharply right with the election of several new senators, including

• Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions, and

• Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who said pregnant single women should not be allowed to teach in public schools. …

Exit polls indicate that Christian conservatives are a big reason for those wins. About 78 percent of self-described born-again Christians voted for Bush, himself a born-again Christian. A fifth of all voters said moral values were the most important issue in the campaign, and three out of four of those voters went for Bush. …

Look for the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular to be the next battleground where social conservatives flex their muscle, several social conservative leaders said.

“I’ve heard commentators say Bush should pick judges who don’t polarize,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America. “Nonsense … The president shouldn’t be cutting any deals with Democrats.”

Letters-to-the-Editor

Vlad Dimdahl

ABQjournal: Rough and Tumble of Politics Now Spawns Hatred By John Dendahl, For the Journal

The surprise now is the pure hatred Bush’s opponents have mobilized, beginning at the conclusion of the 2000 election. Bush is clearly not hateful personally, and he has done nothing to disgrace his office as did his predecessor.

Yet hatred, rather than spirited disagreement, has been a staple of the opposition for nearly four years.

It was harsh of the “liberal” Albuquerque Journal to publish Dimdahl the day after the day after. It’s like sending Vlad the Impaler to tend to the injured on the battlefield — and handing him a box of salt as he slithers out the door.

Dimdahl, the mother of all angry white males, the master of viciousness, is still shocked at the antipathy of half the nation towards a president who puts the Bible above the Constitution (itself an impeachable offense). How could anybody dislike such a nice guy, whose loyalists did everything they could to demonize Kerry. Such a nice guy, whose supporters believe dissent is treason, maybe blasphemy. A decent man whose victory depended on hiding the rising abortion rate in his “culture of life” and his playing into the hands of an enemy whose goal is to bankrupt the country. A fine fellow who can’t think of a single mistake he’s made. A simple man who is in a bit over his head but willing to resolutely wreak the world. What’s to dislike?

In a column that reads like 3 bad columns instead of the usual one, Dimdahl expresses admiration for the prior misguided war-mongering president from Texas (is it in the water down there?), through a curious … what? not really a defense of the Hammer, Tom Delay, more of a rebuke of Delay’s weakness (here we see the inevitable self-destruction of a pack of mean people), ending with the beatification of Duhbya. Of course, he manages another swipe at Clinton in the process, which makes me remember Nixon, who resigned in shame — is that why Republicans don’t name buildings after him?

As for uniting and forgiving, you’ll see me reach out to Dimdahl when it’s time to feed him crow. Won’t be long now. mjh

PS: Some will say it is unfair to call the Journal conservative for publishing Dimdahl (and endorsing Bush). Afterall, look at the balance provided by printing the liberal Ellen Goodman’s column, in which she explains what was wrong with Kerry. I’m looking for the column that says more people voted against Bush than have ever voted against any president.