Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie.

:-) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Oct-24-Sun-2004/opinion/25022791.html> Sunday, October 24, 2004 Las Vegas Review-Journal Why isn't Kerry way ahead? Most liberals think those stupid heartland voters just don't get it By VIN SUPRYNOWICZ REVIEW-JOURNAL I was reminded why I usually don't bother with the canned PBS "Washington Week" program when I accidentally tuned it in last Sunday. (OK, I found it shamefully riveting -- like slowing down to inspect the carnage of a traffic accident.) In an attempt to assemble an even-handed panel to discuss how George Bush and John Kerry did in the debates, host Gwen Ifill and her tax-funded PBS producers assembled four folks, one each from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine and National Public Radio. Jim Bovard and Doug Bandow and Walter Williams and Bumper Hornberger were all out on the tennis court? PBS can't afford to fly in a single token conservative or libertarian from the Orange County Register, the Colorado Springs Gazette or even the Detroit News? Are any of these people likely to discuss (or even grasp) what a Kerry administration would do to the business environment in this country? Has any of them (or Sen. Kerry, for that matter) ever run or even worked for a small business? Ms. Ifill even fed her panel a line straight out of those hundreds of spam e-mail letters we received -- generally beginning some hours before the debates -- saying, "What I saw tonight was John Kerry looking presidential." Listen up, gang: This isn't 1960. No one was watching to see if the "young, callow" Sen. John Kennedy -- er, Kerry -- could hold his own against that master of political minutiae on the global stage, eight-year veteran Vice President Richard Nixon. John Kerry was cast in the role (I use the verb advisedly) by the chiefs of the military-industrial status quo (gotta discredit that Howard Dean; he might actually cut off the Halliburton contracts) because he looks like someone swiped the audio-animatronic Lincoln from Disneyland and shaved off his beard. Of course he looks presidential. No one ever doubted John Kerry studied harder in prep school and is more likely to speak in complete sentences than former longtime heavy drinker George Bush. What people wonder about the guy is whether, if he's elected, he wouldn't be likely to pull on a striped jersey and a black beret, light up a Gauloise and promptly go sell us out to Jacques Chirac, who loaned and sold billions worth of stuff to Saddam Hussein after Sept. 11, and to Kofi Annan, who with his son is currently up to his ears in the crooked Iraq oil-for-food cash diversion scandal. Ms. Ifill, who is about as likely to ever vote for George Bush as she is to request major dental surgery without an anaesthetic, seemed genuinely puzzled as she asked her panelists about the undecided voters, again and again, "Who are these people?" After all, folks of Ms. Ifill's intellectual stature decided how to vote in this election back in November 2000. What kind of unwashed snake-handling Bible-thumpers could still be undecided? They still out at the stock car races, or what? Two to 4 percent of the populace will indeed decide this election, which looks close as to the popular vote. But frankly, I doubt the Electoral College vote will look that close -- precisely because the Electoral College was designed to protect small rural states from having our national elections decided in a few corrupt urban cesspools. The socialists in California, Daleytown, New York and New England have convinced themselves -- with the co-dependent aid of the thoroughly left-leaning bicoastal press that I saw on display on PBS last Sunday -- that this election is a close call. But why then is John Kerry, who they're bugling as having "won every debate by a landslide," still running behind? Remember, this is the bunch who couldn't imagine how their hero, Adlai Stevenson, could possibly lose to that slow-talking dimwit, Dwight D. Eisenhower -- twice. And they only beat the skulking Richard Nixon in 1960 by outright union-run vote fraud in West Virginia and Illinois. No, as the Electoral College votes are tallied Nov. 2, I think it may be clearer that there are now (again?) two Americas: a "sophisticated" urban kleptocracy made up of California and Hawaii, Daleyville and New York and New England, still moaning that our tax rates lag behind those of "progressive" Europe and Japan, and the rest, a huge red mass of pickups with dogs in the back, shouting "Yahoo" and -- I'm not saying this doesn't make me a bit uneasy, mind you -- anxious to go kick some serious A-rab ass. The reason these leftist spinmeisters can't seem to parse the thoughts of the "undecided voters" is that they're asking the wrong question. These voters are not trying to make a decision between George Bush and John Kerry. About two-thirds of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to go with their lower-tax, less-government principles and vote for Libertarian Michael Badnarik, or whether John Kerry and his "internationalist" socialist pals are so truly dangerous that these final holdouts should hold their noses and vote for simpleminded warmonger George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act. The remaining one-third of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to vote their pacifist principles and cast a ballot for Ralph Nader or the Greens -- or whether George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act are so dangerous that they should hold their noses and vote for John Kerry -- who, after all, voted for the war in Iraq, and for the hideous Patriot Act. Evidence of how large this unreported phenomenon has become arises now in the form of Web sites such as www.votepair.org, which seeks to "pair up" Kerry voters in states that are not in play in this election, with third-party voters in battleground states. Goal? The Kerryites in New York and California (Massachusetts? Illinois?) offer to vote for Nader, Cobb or Badnarik (in states that Kerry will win, anyway), thus assuring these third-party candidates of the same nationwide totals, "freeing up" third-party voters in the swing states to cast a vote for John Kerry. I'm not saying such technically illegal schemes will work, mind you -- just that they recognize the real conundrum the truly undecided voter now faces. No, in the end, George Bush is likely to win because Americans prefer "the devil they know"; because Bush at least talks about leaving us in control of some part of our lives; because Americans rarely elect U.S. senators; because Americans rarely elect "progressive liberals" (the preferred modern euphemism for socialists); because Americans never elect anyone who admits he's going to raise our taxes (where's the Walter Mondale Presidential Library?); and because Americans have never changed presidents in the middle of a war. What's that? It's "not a real war"? Howard Dean could have made that case, as do Mr. Badnarik and Mr. Nader. But Kerry voted for the war in Iraq ... and for the hideous Patriot Act, while he was at it. Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie. None of this is to deny George Bush is inarticulate and has done little or nothing to downsize government. But does anyone think John Kerry would do better at that task, simply because he's a better public speaker? If that were the case, wouldn't Jesse Jackson already be president? George Bush is likely to win a substantial Electoral College victory in part because Americans figure he comes by his simple-minded (but still, in the end, right and decent) principles of honestly and sincerely, whereas John Kerry's only known principle, his sole anchor of conscience, was his belief that interventionist, "unwinnable" foreign wars such as Vietnam were bad. He has now abandoned that anchor and principle in vowing to continue the war in Iraq, because the focus groups told him so. And George Bush is also likely to win because John Kerry really is dangerous. Remember, the Clinton-Gore ticket won election only because they claimed to be "new Democrats" from conservative small Southern states who would downsize government and "end welfare as we know it." When Al Gore showed his true colors four years ago -- especially on gun control and socialized medicine -- he went down in flames, even in the South. Bush is actually likely to run more strongly this time -- especially as Iraq is a wash, what with Kerry absurdly promising to win it with his friends, the French. Why? Americans have no intention of turning tail and running from Iraq, and thus handing Islam a huge recruiting victory in the Arab heartland -- which is precisely what we all know John Kerry really wants to do, despite his absurd contention that Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan will pull on their hip boots and wade in to save our bacon. But more importantly, John Kerry served as lieutenant governor of "Have a Gun, Go to Jail" Massachusetts. Hello? I know retired servicemen who get from New Hampshire to New York by driving around Massachusetts so they won't be jailed for possession of a self-defense weapon -- they don't want to pay the governor of that state $5 in taxes on a dinner and gas. John Kerry would hand over one-seventh of the American economy to Hillary Clinton and her socialized medicine scheme. He would embrace the crippling Kyoto Treaty (he blamed George Bush, during the debates, for "distancing our allies" by refusing to sign) and put the Derek Shearer-Roberta Achtenburg gang back in charge of environmental and workplace regulation. (You think American factory jobs are fleeing overseas now? Elect this guy and it would be, "Last person out of the Rust Belt, please turn out the light.") John Harris of the Post told Ms. Ifill that John Kerry has never led in the polls because "he has a problem connecting personally with the voters." Well, that's true. But couldn't it also be because they can clearly see he's lying about all that "job creation" -- that in fact he can't wait to turn over the country to a bunch of regulation-happy socialist academics out of Harvard, Columbia and the People's Republic of Santa Monica? Nah. Voters out in the heartland couldn't be concerned about that. Them tobacco-chewing cowboys is too dumb. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods." -- H.L. Mencken