A little over a week ago, I hosted a Party for President Bush at my summer apartment in Falls Church, Virginia. I was more than happy with the resounding turn-out and the energetic support that was accorded President Bush’s re-election by the packed picnic-area of college-aged, DC interns and people from the surrounding community. That night was grass roots at its finest, minus the angry and debilitating, empty-rhetoric of mob-style street politics. Fifty-plus of the President’s strongest supporters were out in full force in a rousing demonstration of Republican solidarity.
This election year, although the road to re-election for President Bush will be a bumpy one, I am confident that President Bush will ultimately prevail. It won’t be easy though. Democrats are angry and activist and will stop at nothing to win.
The Democratic Convention, a little over a week ago, reminded each and every Bush supporter, just how important it is to defeat John Kerry in order to keep America on the right track, winning the war on terror, and moving in the right direction at home.
Though DNC Chairman McAuliffe gave pre-convention orders for speakers to be on their most-moderate behavior; the underlying radicalism of the Democratic Party showed through beneath its glossy veneer like never before. The DNC played host to Howard Dean, Teddy Kennedy, Al Gore, and Dennis Kucinich.
Ron Reagan, Jr spited his late father’s staunch Republican legacy by speaking at the DNC. He hen went on to take a swipe at religious Americans and their heartfelt beliefs. Later that evening, the new de-facto Democratic religion post-911 became clear. Democrats closed-out the night with a benediction led by a Muslim cleric, ushering in a never-before-seen, religious solemnity over the extreme, church-state-separation crowd, which reeked of pandering to potential Muslim voters.
Democrats started off more restrained as per their plan to sell John Kerry to undecided voters. But on the third night, their cover was blown to smithereens, when the Reverend Al Sharpton took the stage. Sharpton lashed out at the president in an attempt to scare away potential black votes for President Bush. Sharpton implied, among other hate-filled lies, that President Bush was trying to buy the black vote, that Bush would not have supported the Brown v. Board decision, and that without racial preferences, Clarence Thomas would be a nobody today. Sharpton, America’s premier racial demagogue, epitomizes efforts – akin to the Southern Strategy of the 1960s – by Democratic activists to maintain its hold on black voters.
The Convention bottomed out, when John Kerry took to the stage for his final address to the zealots of the Democratic Party. Kerry tested the country’s intelligence and its memory. In a long-winded speech, loaded with catchy one-liners and schmaltzy platitudes, but devoid of realistic or sound policy proposals; John Kerry attempted a bit of a disappearing act. In his entire speech, Kerry did not once mention his vehement, post-Vietnam, anti-war activity. What’s more, John Kerry only alluded to his 20-year slug in the Senate once.
John Kerry has every reason to run and hide from his twenty-year Senate record. Besides having few major legislative accomplishments to boot and having taken both sides on just about every issue – for and against the war in Iraq, for and against the No Child Left Behind Act, for and against the Patriot Act, for and against gay marriage, etc. – the positions that Kerry has taken are almost always the wrong ones.
Kerry voted to authorize force in Iraq. His rhetoric at the time was vehemently insistent that Saddam posed an imminent threat. Then primary season rolled around and Kerry was behind Howard Dean as the vociferous, anti-war candidate early on, so Kerry changed his tune and began criticizing the war. Kerry even voted against the $87 billion supplement for America’s troops, which in hindsight comes as no surprise from someone reflexively anti-war since his post-Vietnam days criticizing his fellow troops and accusing them of large-scale war crimes.
Right now, Kerry is engaged in a disingenuous attempt to portray himself as a "fiscal conservative". Kerry has recently been making unbelievable claims that he can half the deficit in 4 years, while at the same time declaring healthcare a "universal right" and promising oodles of other government goodies to buy votes.
President Bush inherited the Clinton recession, September 11, and the War on Terror as drains on government revenues. Republicans pushed to enact tax cuts, endorsed by Alan Greenspan, to spur economic growth. Those cuts are not chiefly to blame for the deficit, but have only contributed to the current economic resurgence. Profligate government spending such as that proposed by Kerry is what is truly to blame for the current deficits. In reality, a Kerry presidency would thrust the country even further into debt and send tax rates for hardworking Americans soaring.
Democrats have waged a Herculean effort to re-package Kerry’s record as a reflexively anti-war, tax-and-spend liberal who is weak on national defense as a fiscally-conservative, muscular moderate who would prosecute the war as aggressively and as effectively as President Bush. Democrats have tried and they will fail.
To read Gary Davidoff's counterpoint click here
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