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Bush action, Democrat reaction
Indianapolis Star ^ | 12/30/03 | E. J. Dionne

Posted on 12/30/2003 11:45:08 AM PST by Nonstatist

Edited on 05/07/2004 6:27:00 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. -- Every action, said the political pundit Sir Isaac Newton, produces an equal and opposite reaction.

The year 2003 will be remembered as the time when Democrats decided to fight back against President Bush after coddling and even embracing him in 2002. This whiplash will mean some surprising things for 2004.


(Excerpt) Read more at indystar.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2004; bush; democrats; prevarications
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watch for the appearance of the new, pragmatic Howard Dean, the doctor with an unerring sense of his party's pulse.

LOL! The media will do their part, you can be sure of that.

1 posted on 12/30/2003 11:45:09 AM PST by Nonstatist
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To: Nonstatist
The blood pressue of the Dem party, after electio day, will be 60/40...as in Bush 60%, dean 40%
2 posted on 12/30/2003 11:49:07 AM PST by ken5050
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To: Nonstatist
Democrats are so hungry to beat Bush that they will let their nominee be pragmatic and shrewd.

Poor, poor E.J. Dionne. Envy and frustration have finally pushed him off the deep end.

Dean, "pragmatic and shrewd"? Sorry, don't think he has it in him. And even if he wanted to change, it's way too late. The footage of his endless string of loopy and dangerous statements is already in the can.

3 posted on 12/30/2003 11:53:15 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
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To: Nonstatist
It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to so divisive

60%+ approval rating doesn't sound all that divisive. The divided Dems seem to be limited to the 9 RAT candidates, their sycophants and chroniclers.

4 posted on 12/30/2003 11:55:09 AM PST by Mike Darancette (Proud member - Neoconservative Power Vortex)
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To: Nonstatist
As usual, as long as you are doing things THEIR way, you are being "bipartisan". The Rats are just immature children who simply will not play unless they get to make up all the rules and then ignore them when convenient.
5 posted on 12/30/2003 11:59:27 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants (Even if the government took all your earnings, you wouldn’t be, in its eyes, a slave.)
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To: Nonstatist
I hope that this is indicative of mainstream democRAT thinking! If so, the democRATs are toast in the next election, not just in the presidential race, but across the board.
6 posted on 12/30/2003 11:59:28 AM PST by The_Victor
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To: Nonstatist
Once again Dionne has gotten it laughably wrong. For a short period after 9/11, the far left kept its head down because they knew that their virulent anti-Americanism would have political costs. But after a while, it was hard for them to keep it hidden, and once again it was exposed for the world to see - in the effort to turn the Homeland Security dept. into a Union stronghold, in the votes leading up to the Iraq war, and especially now that the US has the upper hand in Iraq. Dionne is so far left himself that he's blinded and can't even see where all the partisanship is coming from.
7 posted on 12/30/2003 12:00:29 PM PST by The Electrician
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To: Nonstatist
The year 2003 will be remembered as the time when Democrats decided to fight back against President Bush after coddling and even embracing him in 2002. This whiplash will mean some surprising things for 2004.

It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to so divisive.

It's tough to find someone who can contradict himself this fast. Dionne claims that Democrats have decided to fight against President Bush after embracing him in 2002.

But notice -- it is Bush who is divisive.

8 posted on 12/30/2003 12:03:50 PM PST by SolidSupplySide
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To: Miss Marple; Howlin; PhiKapMom; Grampa Dave
Don't miss this piece of dribble.......
9 posted on 12/30/2003 12:04:51 PM PST by deport ( Some folks wear their halos much too tight...)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
Agreed. E.J. Dionne is letting his 'feelings' get in the way of his thought processes. His only rational choice now is to project the outcome of a (most probable) Bush-Dean contest, and to reflect if it will be either a Dukakis or Mondale-sized 'ass-whupping'...

These poor liberals really believe their own press. Did any Republican in 1996 really think that Bob Dole would beat Bill Clinton? No, but we went to the polls anyway.

I hope the left gets so discouraged by October that they decide to just stay home from the polls.


dvwjr
10 posted on 12/30/2003 12:06:03 PM PST by dvwjr
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To: Nonstatist
Party pulse is a flatline.
11 posted on 12/30/2003 12:07:59 PM PST by smith288 (Secret member of the VRWC elite forces)
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To: Mike Darancette
E.J.: It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to so divisive

You: 60%+ approval rating doesn't sound all that divisive.

Have you already forgotten that to a Democrat, anybody who doesn't agree with THEM is, in fact, "divisive," regardless of what the rest of the country thinks?

12 posted on 12/30/2003 12:08:29 PM PST by Howlin (Bush has stolen two things which Democrats believe they own by right: the presidency & the future)
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To: Nonstatist
It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to so divisive.

Was Bush being divisive when he was being called:
- A liar
- An idiot
- Hitler
- A miserable failure

A tough call that one......

13 posted on 12/30/2003 12:08:56 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: Nonstatist
LOL! I know it comes late in the year, but I would vote for this article as the most flamboyantly partisan piece of BS to be printed in a newsrag in 2003.

Bush has gone way, way out of his way to be a unifier--to the point of cow-towing to the dims on many issues. In return, they have spit in his eye, stabbed him in the back, and mocked his efforts. What a bunch of BS this clown spews!
14 posted on 12/30/2003 12:09:54 PM PST by San Jacinto
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Comment #15 Removed by Moderator

To: Nonstatist
Howard Dean, the doctor with an unerring sense of his party's pulse.

We'll see if the doctor is a quack or not pretty soon.

16 posted on 12/30/2003 12:16:47 PM PST by Prodigal Son
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To: Nonstatist
The Dems are just mad because Bush actually felt bad for the victims and their families after 9/11, whereas our previous president would have used it as a photo-op (think Somalia).

tSG
17 posted on 12/30/2003 12:25:00 PM PST by alkaloid2 (Hey! Check out http://www.thesupergenius.com!)
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To: Nonstatist
And watch for the appearance of the new, pragmatic Howard Dean, the doctor with an unerring sense of his party's pulse.

He is right about that. Dean is just USING the lefties of his party to get the nomination. He is going to pull to the center very hard, but by using Clintonian verbal methods. The election will probably be alot closer than most people here think.

18 posted on 12/30/2003 12:29:03 PM PST by Paradox (Cogito ergo boom.)
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To: Nonstatist; All
Unrequited bipartisanship

Bipartisan as "stealing" the Senate, which FORCED Bush to go Partisan.

That having been said, Bush is Very vulnerable, especially if he caves in on Illegal Immigration, as he seems likely to do.

With 6+ million 'unique' votes on the Michael Savage website running 19 to 1 against "Amnesty" in any of its disguises, and Savage now seeking to use that response to bring Immigration issues to the fore, Bush could lose to Dean next year.

It is Bush's race to lose, and he seems to want to risk it!

19 posted on 12/30/2003 12:41:40 PM PST by Lael (Bush to Middle Class: Send your kids to DIE in Iraq while I send your LIVELIHOODS to INDIA!)
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To: Nonstatist
What an astonishing piece! This is the sort of thing I have hoped for, evidence that the DemocRat party cannot see its own candidate with a sanguine appraisal of political reality. I breathe a sigh of relief: the hate of the left coupled with medical doctor hubris may just yet ferment into a a sophisticatedly blind naivete that will destroy liberalism for at least a decade, and maybe longer!

Republicans won in 2002, but Bush lost most Democrats forever.

Bush never had DemocRats! A DemocRat cannot be trusted ever, especially a liberal whose morals and ethics are by definition ad hoc and situationally.

Conservative critics of "Bush hatred" like to argue that opposition to the president is a weird psychological affliction. It is nothing of the sort. It is a rational response to getting burned.

Clever, to call hate a rational response.

Critics of "Bush hatred" do not argue that opposition is a wierd psychological afflication, in and of itself. Rather, the opposition to the president in the face of tremendous support for his policies and in the general voting population is what is cited as wierd. Moreover, the strange concoction of conspiracies to explain the success of Bush policies is plainly neurotic.

No one understood this sense of betrayal better or earlier than Howard Dean. Dean's candidacy took off because many in the Democratic rank and file were furious that Washington Democrats allowed themselves be taken to the cleaners. [emphasis added]

Washington Democrats, having political experience, read the nation's mood and acted in accord with it (as representative government is supposed to do). How, supposedly, were they "taken to the cleaners"? GWB has proven himself an expert at issue co-opting, just as Bill Clinton was. Is this what infuriated the Angry DemocRats?

Many of Dean's current loyalists had been just as supportive of Bush after 9/11 because they, too, felt that doing so was patriotic.

The four or five of Dean loyalists that truly supported GWB after 9/11 will not make that much difference next November.

Here's what's interesting for 2004: The conventional wisdom, fed by shrewd Republican operatives and commentators, is that Democrats, so out there in their antipathy for Bush, will push their party into an extremist wonderland and lose white men, security moms and anybody else who does not share their desire for revenge.

This is true.

The opposite is true. Democrats will not have to spend inordinate time or money in this election year "uniting their base." Opposition to Bush has already done that.

This paragraph does not follow logically from the preceding one, so the article becomes a tad confusing. "...white men, security moms and anybody else who does not share their desire for revenge" are not part of the base support for Dean, they are persons part of the majority who support GWB, and are not united in "opposition to Bush."

In the 2000 election, Bush had an advantage over Al Gore because Republican rank-and-filers so hated Bill Clinton -- and so wanted to win -- that they gave Bush ample room to sound as moderate as John Breaux or Olympia Snowe.

No one in the Republican Party sounds as liberal as John Breaux or Olympia Snow. This is a beautifully clear example of how a liberal cannot see anything liberal as being anything but mainstream, centrist, bedrock, American value, majority opinion. Bush sounded as he was, a centrist, and the conservatives of the Republican Party did give him breathing room.

I am gratified that this liberal reaffirms liberal blindness: Dean will not change his crazy tune because the libs believe it's the way the majority of Americans feel, and they've only been deceived by GWB. I am so relieved that they won't wake up to reality in time....

Gore, in the meantime, had to claw back the votes of liberals and lefties who had strayed to Ralph Nader.

God bless Nader for his attraction for ultralibs.

This time, the Democrats will have most of the election year to appeal to swing voters. Democrats are so hungry to beat Bush that they will let their nominee be pragmatic and shrewd.

We must be sure to assail all the lies libs will tell to make their enemy-appeasing candidate seem like a sane alternative. I am so glad Karl Rove is on this watch.

20 posted on 12/30/2003 12:48:40 PM PST by TheGeezer
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