Hating Bush (Cathryn Crawford)

Hating President Bush has become a national pastime. It seems almost funny, how one man can stir up the ire of so many people. There are all sorts of reasons to hate the President. When BestandWorst.com asked their readers why they hate Bush, there were all sorts of reasons, which ranged from “because he fits way too many anti-Christ proficiencies, seriously”, to. “No, the question is - who would let an ugly monkey rule a nation?” Now, these are funny – somewhat because of the ignorance (a President doesn’t rule a nation), and somewhat because of the wording (ugly monkey?).

But, seriously, Democrats – especially those who are running for President in 2004 - love this outpouring of rage, and they’re quick to do their best to channel it. There are “I hate Bush” bumper stickers, t-shirts, underwear. There are myriad websites devoted to the subject. There was even a recent Bush-hating conference held in Hollywood. The Democrats want as many people as possible to think it’s cool to hate Bush, and they’re pushing it as hard as possible.

However, is their policy of hate actually going to win them any votes in 2004? Sure, there are the die-hard, “yellow dog” Democrats, (as we call them in the South). But these guys don’t just hate Bush – they hate Republicans in general. Actually, they hate Independents and Greens and Libertarians, too – everyone but Democrats. A hate-Bush policy isn’t likely to affect them one way or another. They’re going to vote the same way they always do.

Then there is that elusive group of middle-ground voters. This is an eclectic group. Contained here are the so-called soccer moms, the white Southern guys with the Confederate flags hanging in their trucks, the college students who are trying to figure out who is who and what ideology fits them best. These are the people that are truly struggling (for the most part) to make the right decision. Most have already formed opinions about which political party they agree with, and most tend to vote one way or another on a regular basis. However, these are the people that the Democrats are struggling to plug into the electricity of their rage and ire against the President.

Democrats, however, don’t seem to understand how silly, futile and powerless this attitude makes them look. Most people do not respond well to purely reactionary policies, but that’s what the Democrats are using. There doesn’t seem to be a unified plan among them; there’s just a lot of smoke and hot air and rage and screaming. It makes one wonder if the Democrats would exist were Bush not in office. They have become the party of the anti-Bush – the party that isn’t the Republicans.

I have to admit – I’m not one of those people that want the Democrats to just vanish from sight, though I sympathize with those who do. As in economics, a little competition usually improves the quality of the end result. However, Democrats are marketing themselves so badly lately that it’s not even a competition anymore – it’s like watching a big man finally kick the crap out of the dog that’s been nipping its heels. You feel a bit sorry for the dog, but you thoroughly enjoy watching. And so it is now. Politics is about practicality. If the Democrats think that hating Bush is going to win those votes, they’re going to continue to push that policy as hard as they can, even when it means getting kicked. It didn’t work in 2000, it backfired horribly in 2002, but they simply can’t learn their lesson. Maybe they need another kick.

Cathryn Crawford is a student at the University of Texas. She can be reached with questions or comments at CathrynCrawford@WashingtonDispatch.com.

Thus, the burden is on the Democrats to persuade people that they have a better vision for the future, and a clear plan on how to realize that vision.

The dems are incapable of doing this.

Even Clinton, the great white hope of the Democratic Party, wasn't particularly sure what his legacy was supposed to be. Fortunately for him, he was blessed with enemies that had less of the 'vision thing' than he did.

Their problem for Dems is that they have evolved into a mindset that they are unable to escape from. They want to ridicule Bush for being stupid, which is ironic considering how handily he outwits them. They want to present him as an ignorant gunslinging cowboy, although they are the ones with nothing on their agenda but blind rage and inarticulate dissatisfaction.

He's the pawn of special interests, they say. Or maybe that's what Soros paid them to say. The list goes on and on, but the bottom line remains the same. The Democrats have no product, and mediocre packaging.

I think that bunch in Hollywood is tied in with the George Soros group.He's put up millions in order to defeat Bush.

Your guess is on target. A large part of the funding for this gang of traitors was funded by Americans Coming Together.

Below is a link telling what ACT or Americans Coming Together is all about:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1028465/posts

THE FRONT (hillary Replacing Democrat Party with "Americans Coming Together")
New York Post ^ | DICK MORRIS

Posted on 11/25/2003 12:52:10 AM PST by kattracks

November 25, 2003 -- THE Democratic Party is being replaced by a new group called "Americans Coming Together," which has been launched with two $10 million donations from financier George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation. The new organization wants to raise $94 million to finance a massive campaign against Bush - all with soft money. The Democratic Party, which is only allowed to raise hard money (donations limited to $2,000 per person) by the McCain-Feingold law is unable to amass the resources necessary for a national campaign, so it is ceding the main role to Americans Coming Together.
Hypocrisy in American politics at least provides material for humor. How else are we to view the attempts of Democratic Party leaders to circumvent the McCain-Feingold prohibition on the use of soft money in campaigns after their party insisted on its inclusion in the bill?

As the campaign-finance-reform bill went through Congress, Democrats demanded a ban on soft money donations to political parties. They succeeded in including it as the reform's centerpiece.

But it turns out that Republicans are raising twice as much as Democrats are in hard money: $158 million for the GOP vs. $66.5 million for the Democrats. So the Democrats have resorted to a loophole in McCain-Feingold and worked to maximize soft money contributions to phony political committees, allegedly independent of the party apparatus and thus not covered by the soft money ban.

The Democrats have always found hard money hard to come by. In the last election cycle, they financed 56 percent of their campaign costs with soft money while the Republicans used soft money for only 39 percent.

This lastest shift is not a case of matching a Republican move. The GOP has only begun to explore the loophole the Democrats are busy using. It is hypocrisy, plain and simple.

Americans Coming Together, a supposedly independent campaign committee, is reportedly one-third of the way toward its fund-raising goal. Its nominal independence from the Democratic Party, required by McCain-Feingold, is paper-thin.

Harold Ickes, President Bill Clinton's former deputy chief of staff who helped orchestrate the soft money fund-raising that financed the 1996 Clinton campaign, is working closely with Soros to fund Americans Coming Together.

Ickes has not always honored the boundaries between supposedly independent expenditures and political campaigns required by the Federal Elections Commission.

I almost fell through the floor of the White House early in 1996 when I attended a meeting chaired by Ickes of representatives of the political action committees of major American labor unions. Gathered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, they each recounted their plans for "independent expenditures" against the Republicans in the coming election campaign. The meeting, quite illegal in many ways, represented exactly the kind of co-ordination forbidden by the campaign-finance laws.

Ickes is about as independent of Hillary as Bill is. He is her chief advisor. His photo graces her memoirs. He was her key operative in securing the Senate seat in New York. To pretend that anything he would do is independent of Hillary is like saying that the left hand is independent of the right hand.

One motivation for the Clinton move to circumvent the Democratic Party and establish a lifeboat in the form of Americans Working Together is that they view with alarm Howard Dean's rise to the Democratic nomination.

Dean, upon copping the prize, is likely to fire Terry MacAuliffe and take control of the Democratic National Committee. No longer will its coffers be available to the Clintons to use as their private fund, channeling donations to candidates and causes they favor or that favor them.

So, before the hand-over of party power from Clinton to Dean takes place, they are working on stripping the Democratic Party of its central role and giving it to the more pliant Americans Working Together, instead.

The Clintons' efforts to sidetrack Dean haven't worked. Wesley Clark is collapsing in most national polls and has yet to find a primary to his liking to enter in force. John Kerry, whose campaign staff quit last week, is having difficulty raising funds even though the Clintons and the Kennedys have sent him their top operatives to try to bail him out.

Dean seems destined to win the nomination and with it control of the party. So the Clintons are moving out.

* HILLARY GOES LIBERAL: It's official. Hillary is a liberal. For those who doubted whether she was a "new" Democrat or an old one, her vote yesterday to continue the Kennedy filibuster of the president's Medicare prescription-drug benefit should settle the question. In the most important vote of the decade, so far, she voted with 25 other liberal Democrats against 22 moderates who voted for closure. This vote separated the left from the center of the party, and Hillary opted to go left. Big mistake.

I think the problem with the Democrats at the moment is that they have made several major mistakes and most significant is the abandoning of the conservative wing within the party... Also, I think the temperature of the majority of the country runs about center left but since 9-11 the mood is definitely more center right. The national leadership does not know how to even approach the center and has headed straight to the left. Also, I think Zell Miller stated it very well when he commented on the inability of the national party leadership to help those in tight races because most of the national "stars" of the Democratic Party can not come in to a tight race and affect the swing vote...

Bush, for all of his problems, can do that.

I also agree with a commentator in Dallas that I read yesterday that the country is not necessarily polarized. The media and the political party leadership and the commentators that get on TV... They are polarized! Most of us out here worry more about making a living...

Right now, you are absolutely correct that the Democrats are not doing well in the national discussion. They do not have the votes, they do not have talk radio, and they do not have a uniting issue. And I would never suggest that the Republicans or the Administration will leave bin Laden and Hussein unfound just to keep national security at the top of the list of issues but I think they are pleased to have the problem. And it is difficult to run against a President who is fighting a war....

Now, some of the cynics I hang out with think bin Laden or Hussein will be captured somewhere between August and November of next year. I hang out with a rough crowd.

The Democrats have no winning issues as long as the President is making things happen. I think many do not like the actions he is taking but that is preferable to a weak Democratic President that can't get anything done because he does not have the power in the Senate or House...

The hate bush is not about winning the presidential election in 2004. It's about tapping into the fear and frustration of moneyed limousine liberals, energizing the Drat base and momentum in the primary season - specifically as a wedge issue for Dean as the angry outsider liberal against the staid loser leadership. And it's working for him so it becomes a self-feeding phenomenum.

The question is, will the momentum carry moderates/independents for Dean or can/will Bush use the primary extremism as a wedge issue for moderates in the presidential election?

The economic turn-around already provides fodder for making extreme duplicitous statement look foolish (Bush is talking us into recession early in 2001, Bush's economic plan will deepen the recession, hurt the recovery and they don't understand economics).

The four reasons given for the war by Bush and Powell may seal the Drat's fate.

1. The mass graves provide ample evidence of the immorality of not supporting coalition efforts to depose Saddam (and irrelavancy of those that did).
2. A clear, concise and convincing report of ties between Saddam's family and intelligence service to international and regional terrorists. Force the Drats to argue, "Yes, but ... that's not an imminent threat to the homeland." Neither was AQ until 9/11.
3. Evidence that the Iraqis were deceiving the renewed inspections, including long range missile parts/programs (North Korea supplied); chemical WEAPONS programs and infrastructure including labs, names of scientists, interviews/confessions, materials and documents; same for any biological or nuclear.
4. Evidence of WMD stocks. Kay needs to answer the what, where, and when of the missing WMD this spring. Failure to explain this issue will haunt this administration long past the 2004 election.

My biggest fear is W will make the same mistake as his dad, assuming re-election based on past performance. He needs to lay out convincing reasons that he should be re-elected based on what needs to be done in the future. I think Americans want to know how peace and prosperity will be returned and maintained. Staying the course is not an election campaign slogan.

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