Suprynowicz: Why isn't Kerry way ahead?

R.A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Wed Oct 27 17:55:12 PDT 2004


>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 at 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





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