Posted on 11/07/2004 1:30:29 AM PST by Pikamax
God bless America for dropping the dead donkey
GERALD WARNER
IT’S the morality, stupid! The American presidential election turned out to be a bonfire of the vanities for the acolytes of political correctness (even Tom Wolfe was supporting Dubya). So much for Bill Clinton’s suddenly outdated axiom that elections are about the economy - not that the notorious Oval Office onanist could credibly have opted for moral confrontation. As forecast in this column last week, America’s Christian and cultural conservatives came out fighting and reclaimed their country.
The whole notion, of course, was risible in the eyes of the liberal media on both sides of the Atlantic. That people in the 21st century ("in this day and age", as liberalism’s most brain-dead cliché phrases it) would come out and vote on abortion, stem-cell research and homosexual ‘marriage’, instead of addressing such important issues as medical welfare, gender equality and closer engagement with Europe had the liberal élite rolling in the aisles. They are not laughing now. They stopped laughing at around 7.30pm, Eastern Time, on Tuesday evening, as the first disturbing reports came in from the Florida count.
Until then, the Democratic camp and its media fellow travellers had revelled in the reports of a record turnout. As their television screens relayed pictures of unprecedented queues snaking for several blocks around polling stations, the élite leaped to the egotistic, patronising conclusion that the common people had come swarming out, like extras in an Eisenstein film, to implement the revolution that their betters had devised for them.
That crass delusion epitomised the fissiparous detachment of the liberal subculture from the real America: those lines of voters were not The People - just people, the mainstream Americans with whom the Democrats are now hopelessly out of touch. They were mostly Christians; but they were not, for the most part, bible-thumping disciples of white-suited tele-evangelists - at least not in the states that crucially mattered. They were ordinary, church-going husbands and wives, mild in their manner but firm in their convictions. In 2000, when it was "the economy, stupid", no fewer than four million of them abstained. This time, they came out.
And no wonder they did. The East Coast and Californian liberals had made a science of provocation. The nightly spectacle on television of thousands of same-sex ‘marriages’ in California and Massachusetts was promoted by the homosexual lobby on the principle that familiarity breeds content. The reaction of Middle America to this in-your-face aggression was quite the reverse.
Liberals’ inexplicable fixation with the militant homosexual cause (representative of less than 3% of the population) proved self-destructive. In the past month, that lobby has destabilised such widely disparate institutions as the Anglican Church, the European Commission and, now, the Democratic Party. With all 11 states where referenda were held on same-sex marriage rejecting the proposition by majorities that had to be weighed rather than counted, the constitutional amendment that will finally resolve this issue is in the bag.
How quaint, thought European and New York liberals, that voters should be concerned that one in four Americans is aborted in the womb, when they could be supporting measures that would put an extra $500 in their pockets. How ignorant to oppose stem-cell research that will save so many lives. Who got their priorities right? Are the Americans not more thoughtful, more moral and more intelligent to worry about mass extermination of babies?
As for the exploitation of human embryos, it is not hill-billy stupidity to query the destruction of human life, especially when the inflated claims being made for embryo stem-cell research are as far-fetched, in truly scientific terms, as those made for the Philosopher’s Stone and a cruel deception of the critically ill. And is it not strange that this nation of Luddites and scientific illiterates can send probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system, while enlightened Britain can barely run a train up the West Coast line from London to Glasgow?
Make no mistake, this election was a Christian-led counter-revolution. The national exit poll conducted for Associated Press and the major US television networks found that the highest electoral motivation, at 22%, was "moral values". Among weekly churchgoers, Bush scored 61%, Kerry 39%. This broke down into 70% of Protestants, 56% of Catholics. The latter have had their moral and doctrinal sensitivities blunted by Vatican II, yet there are signs that even Catholics indoctrinated by Justice ’n’ Peace guff are on the turn. When the chips were down, in the swing state of Ohio, 65% of Catholics came out for Bush.
As this column predicted last week, the state of Iowa, with its large Catholic electorate, defected to Bush; the other state forecast to do the same - Wisconsin - was just held by John Kerry. Nationally, he got the support of 60% of those who said they "never" attended church; but since they amount to 14% of voters, that was scant consolation.
Across the Union, this election was as historic as it was dramatic. George W Bush led by 3.5 million in the popular vote and won four million more votes than Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide. The turnout was the equivalent of 70% in a British election, with 120 million Americans casting their votes. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are now in solid Republican control: that makes a conservative Supreme Court, with both power and a strong popular mandate to reverse Roe v Wade and other liberal obscenities, a shoo-in.
"Dude, here’s our country!" That is what real Americans told Michael Moore, the hygienically challenged human hamburger whose Pravda-style propaganda has earned him more fans in Cannes than in all 50 states of the Union. Now he wants Hillary Clinton to challenge for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Great idea: an East Coast, liberal, feminist überbitch that might have been computer-realised by Karl Rove, to leave the Democrats with just California, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Bring her on!
Hillary would be an appropriate sequel to Theresa Heinz Kerry, the worst First Lady that America never had. Yet the one memorable phrase of her non-campaign might have summed up the motivation of those millions of middle Americans queuing for seven hours outside polling stations: "Shove it!"
The whole vile, patronising agenda of the bespectacled drabby wimmin, the Florida conspiracy bores, the wine-bar Europhiles and the Hollywood freak show has been trashed. Infanticide is out of fashion; embryos may not be cannibalised much longer; Butch and Sundance will not be taking a trip down the aisle in their lifetimes. Consider it shoved, lady.
Good and funny. This guy has been taking "Mark Steyn" lessons.
This is so great. No, it's fantastic. God bless Gerald Warner, whoever your are. Made my day.
ping this article and also article in post #28
An interesting author who's new to me. I'm sending these out to my email list.
Prairie
He had Help.
So do conservatives in Britain stand any chance at reversing the march to socialism and taking their country back? Or is it too late......?
Prairie
This fellow, Gerald Warner, is the Mark Steyn of British commentary - without the irascible humor. The man has vision and can write!
Bump for the afternoon crowd, I love this article.
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BTTT
Bump to you in case you missed this brilliant piece of writing.
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not sure if you saw this...
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Actually, this article hit on all of my issues but one...Iraq. Security was first with morals second.....
I got sick of changing the channel at 6 pm every night while the gay lobby tried to shove their lifestyle into my two sons (6 and 11) faces every night for about 6 months. I like to watch the evening news but no channel was immune to the coverage. I pulled my kids out of a very pricey private school and put them into a Catholic one because of that coverage........
I refuse to support any gay issue effort and I and our older son have become a candidate for entry into the catholic church as a result. I will not allow the liberal louses to turn my kids against me and convert them into their future minions without a fight! For me this gay marriage coverage was the needle that broke the camels back.......it was the issue that made me draw the line in the sand.
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