Re: Bushs' base stands by him
- From: "Roger" <rogerfx@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 11:27:22 GMT
His base is shrinking all the time.
Just like the trust the American people have in him.
Just like his "mandate."
"Horatio Fudruckerton" <None@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1124066411.4b562d4e8077cc1316182c691a0d73ca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> and this infuriates the left no end. True Americans know
> Bush is the only leader for America in these times.
> This is no time for liberal wishy-washiness or weakness.
>
>
>
>
> PEGGY NOONAN
>
> Bookends
> Why the base--and some outside it--are standing by President Bush.
>
> Thursday, August 11, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
>
> In New York right now the sun is soft, not searing; the humidity just
> high enough that you feel like you're walking through pleasantly warm
> gelatin as you walk along the streets. A good time for a general
> political overview, I say. Let's start with the Bushes.
>
> President Bush is under pressure from various parts of his
> constituency, but there is little sign he's noticed. Among
> conservatives there is rising frustration over immigration, government
> spending and the gradual, slow-mo, day-by-day redefining of what
> modern conservatism is and what the Republican Party stands for that
> has taken place during the Bush presidency. That is in fact the big,
> largely unspoken fact of the Bush presidency.
>
> This will be argued over and may be at least partially resolved in
> 2007 and 2008, as individual Republicans choose which Republican
> contenders for the presidency to back. It will be an orderly process,
> because Republicans are orderly people. But if Republicans lose the
> presidency in 2008, things will get less polite. There will be an
> intraparty fight over what to do about America's borders, what to do
> about dramatically rising spending, what to do about the growth of
> government, how or if to lower deficits, what path to take on taxes,
> where we are going in foreign affairs. That's how Republicans will
> spend the Hillary Clinton years if we get the Hillary Clinton years:
> in a great big donnybrook.
>
> But while Republicans are on the verge of a great struggle, the
> president continues to be supported and appreciated among the
> Republican base. I have talked to all kinds of Republicans this
> summer, and for all their questioning, the base is his.
>
> How could this be? How could the reason for a coming party
> battle--George W. Bush himself--be the continuing object of unified
> party support?
>
> There are many reasons. In a 50-50 nation, you back your guy. Tepid
> support won't do. If it weren't for Mr. Bush you'd have John Kerry, or
> some other avatar of a party led by a man, Howard Dean, who now freely
> admits his party doesn't know what it stands for. Or rather, as he
> puts it, the Democratic Party needs "a message." Well yes. They also
> need clear belief, a known philosophy, and a reason for being.
>
> At any rate, this is no time for ambivalence, confusion and weak
> national leadership. Mr. Bush is a vivid figure who summons vivid
> reactions. Republicans may not always agree with his decisions, but
> they think they understand his thinking: In a time of high stakes and
> war you don't spend your political capital on secondary items like
> spending, which can always be revisited.
>
> As for immigration, Mr. Bush and Karl Rove are not up against a
> tougher Democratic Party. They believe what Democratic political
> professionals believe: that he who owns the Latino vote owns the
> future. Washington's bipartisan establishment attitude toward
> immigration is: Don't upset Mexican-Americans. This is a dangerous
> game. It only works as long as it works. If a group of young Arab
> terrorists crosses the border illegally and takes out Chicago with a
> suitcase bomb, Mexican-Americans will be exactly as angry as every
> other American group, and will vote to fire those in power.
>
> Mr. Bush as a person, as an individual, is as attractive to
> Republicans as he is unattractive to Democrats. Republicans like him
> because he seems like a normal guy--business, family, sports, Top 40
> on the iPod. Democrats hate him for this--how common, how plebian;
> he'd have more elevated tastes if he were a more elevated man.
> Republicans like him for the one way in which he is obviously
> extraordinary: When he says it he means it, and if he promises it
> he'll do it. Democrats see this as evidence of derangement: He doesn't
> change his mind because he thinks he's God's other son, and in any
> case he can't think clearly enough to change his mind. Republicans see
> it more this way: As a West Point official said to me in passing,
> "He's got two of 'em."
>
> Democrats try to tag Mr. Bush as lazy, but that will never work. He
> seems like an activist who's actively engaged. Every time cable news
> does a "Bush Is on Vacation in Crawford" headline they're forced to
> follow it with a clip of the speech Mr. Bush just made. In any case
> liberals are always trying to call Republican presidents lazy. They
> did it with Eisenhower and Reagan too. It never helps the liberal
> cause. They don't know half the country would be relieved to have a
> lazy president as he'd do less and make us less nervous.
>
> And there is Iraq. Republicans on the ground do not believe Mr. Bush &
> Co. lied to get us into war. They believe he had reason to believe
> what he believed, and to move. Saddam had had weapons of mass
> destruction and used them on the Kurds. It wasn't a huge leap to think
> he still had them, and would use them again. In any case the die is
> cast. Republicans are practical. They will continue to back Iraq as
> long as they think victory (the creation of a stable, nonterrorist
> Iraqi government) is achievable. If they come to think it's not,
> they'll peel off until they're gone.
>
> But I think Mr. Bush's continued popularity with his base, and
> actually with a lot of Americans who don't quite say this to
> themselves, is the bookend effect.
>
> In the national imagination Mr. Bush's presidency started on the day
> of 9/11/01. After a few unsure hours he did what he had to do. I'm a
> loving man but I've got a job to do. . . . I can hear you, and soon
> the people who knocked down these buildings will hear you. . . . Al
> Qaeda is to terrorism what the Mafia is to organized crime.
>
> We've been though a lot since then--code red and code orange, war and
> rumors of war, Homeland Security, reports of hidden terror cells,
> attacks on Spain and London. And yet--the other bookend: For all the
> fear and even terror of those days four years ago, for all the reports
> of Mideastern-looking men videotaping structures across America, for
> all the talk of plastic sheeting and
> fill-the-house-with-enough-water-for-three-months--for all that,
> America has not been attacked on its soil again. We have not been
> airplaned, nuked, bio'd or suitcase bombed.
>
> That's the otherbook end. It started with terror and has ended with
> no-terror-since.
>
> That's a big reason his base is still with him, and that's why a lot
> of Americans, when you come right down to it, are with him.
>
> Those are the bookends. And the great question of course is: Will the
> second bookend hold? Every fact of our domestic political future rests
> on the answer to that.
>
> A word on Mrs. Bush. Everyone knows she is popular and admired, but I
> don't think it's been sufficiently noted that Laura Bush, in almost
> five years as first lady, has never made a mistake. She has not struck
> a false note or made a single misstep. This is remarkable. And our
> country has never seen anything like it.
>
> Most first ladies five years in have made themselves look foolish at
> some point, or have been made to look foolish. Jackie Kennedy was the
> focus of sniping over her taste for luxury and long vacations, and was
> not loved until she was a widow. Lady Bird Johnson, with her well
> meaning, slightly clueless earnestness, was regularly lampooned. I
> remember someone doing an imitation of her in which she took the stage
> and introduced "My two semi-beautiful daughters." No one much liked
> the tightly wound Rosalyn Carter, and no one much disliked her. Nancy
> Reagan was reviled as a Hollywood airhead until she was reviled as a
> secret Machiavellian. Hillary Clinton was hated in many corners, and
> not only because she chose to interpret her husband's election to the
> presidency as her elevation to a co-presidency. That was only part of
> it. When they made fun of her changing hairstyles it was because she
> seemed not to be in search of a good look but trying on new blond
> helmets in which to grimly wade forward like Brunhilde.
>
> Even Barbara Bush, probably the most liked of recent first ladies, got
> tagged as the Gray Fox or the Velvet Hammer. She was called tough as a
> boot and tagged as sharp-tongued. But no one has ever laid a glove on
> Laura. It is as if she were born to be first lady--easygoing, gently
> humorous, demure, ladylike. It takes enormous reserves of emotional
> discipline to sustain graciousness, to do the job right, to so disarm
> the press with what must be called, vulgarly but inescapably, natural
> class.
>
> She has never embarrassed our country. Of how many leaders or their
> spouses can that be said?
>
> Well done. Well and amazingly done. Someone should do a monograph on
> what it is she did and how it is she did it. And it should of course
> be noted that she is another reason for her husband's popularity with
> his base, and outside of it, too.
>
> Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and
> author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal
> Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which
> you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears
> Thursdays.
>
>
> http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007087
>
>
>
>
> 'REPUBLICANS RULE - DIMS DROOL'
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Leftist Bush-haters don't learn....
- Next by Date: Re: if bush whack iran
- Previous by thread: Re: Bushs' base stands by him
- Next by thread: Re: Despite all the liberal attempts to derail the American war on terror,
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
