Posted on 11/08/2004 5:48:35 AM PST by OESY
...There is no doubt that John Kerry showed great skill at embracing deeply contradictory positions, but that does not make him unusual; all politicians have mastered the art of self-contradiction. What was remarkable in this election is that one candidate, President Bush, never changed: He said what he meant and meant what he said.
If the Democrats could not appeal to the moral values of people, that fact must have been lost on the 48% of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry....
I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering "divisions and intolerance." It would make as much sense to say that liberals are fostering division and intolerance by favoring abortion and gay marriages. In fact, abortion was not an issue in the election and Messrs. Bush and Kerry both opposed gay marriage. A ban on gay marriage was approved in Oregon, a state won by Sen. Kerry....
People vote for the president for a host of reasons that pollsters have difficulty in grasping. All we seem to know very clearly is where they live.... To explain the vote requires us to explain the variety of factors.... One problem is that they have only some very gross measures on which to work, such as the state of the economy and standings in the polls.
The pollsters do no provide much information because they usually gather too few responses to permit observers to cross-tabulate data into all of the relevant categories....
I draw lessons from the election, but not very deep ones. One is that the profound liberal bias among many big-city newspapers and most TV stations did not determine the outcome....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The difference in this election were energized Christian voters and abortion was an important factor for them along with other moral issues.
The question is more: Why did President Bush win?
The is the better man.
Simple as that.
“It would make as much sense to say that liberals are fostering division and intolerance by favoring abortion and gay marriages.”
In my honest opinion... they definitely are.
“ ...the profound liberal bias among many big-city newspapers and most TV stations did not determine the outcome”
It sure as $shit did! Without the socialist, MSM bias, Bush could have added 5-7 points to his victory!
“In fact, abortion was not an issue in the election and Messrs. Bush and Kerry both opposed gay marriage.”
Kerry built his Senate career on only 2 issues... abortion and cutting defense spending... PERIOD. His first speach to the Senate upon his election 20 years ago was his ardent support of abortion!
“ ...there were religious leaders on both sides of that struggle.“
Yeah right... the Pope... vs. Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton!
“ ...but Sen. Kerry won nearly half of all Catholic votes and over three-fourths of all Jewish ones.”
Sure... the ones who are Secularists or seldom, if ever, attend services!
I moved from Boston just before election J.F.Kerry was my senator(oh the shame)for 18 years. He was used to a 100 mph. wind behind his back from the Boston Globe. He and his team were not used to a real fight and never thought they would have to scrap with the pajamahadeen.
Didn't this election teach us to disregard exit polls as trash?
I'm starting to wonder if Howard Feinman was correct in his prediction that the media was worth 15 points to Kerry. At the time he was speculating that Kerry would be 15 points up, but without the 24//7 media bucket brigade carrying his water, I believe Kerry would have been 15 points DOWN. With all their hard work and the media's "15 points", the best he can do is finish 3-5 points down.
What's with the sudden push the evangelicals to the back of the bus movement?
Money is what they put in big cities. The places that voted for Kerry are overwhelmingly dependent on the governement . Bush wants to scale that back, Kerry wants to increase it. If you were of their mindset, who would you vote for? The one that will make you work or the one what will let you sit on your ass and collect checks?
2.) Kerry is a Democrat
3.) Kerry is a Democrat
Since the Republican party became a national party in 1856, FOUR (4) Democrat presidential candidates have won more than 50% of the popular vote: Samuel Tilden, FDR, LBJ and Jimmy Carter. That's over 38 election cycles spanning 148 years, now. You can put lipstick on a pig, but ultimately, it's still a pig. When Democrats win the White House it's usually because there is a credible third party candidate that draws off enough Republican votes to give them a pleurality.
Frankly, I'm surprised that sKerry got as many votes as he did. It should have been an overwhelming landslide. Apparently, PT Barnum was correct, a sucker (democrat) is born every minute. I can't think of any other reason that would explain why so many people fell for an empty suit. I've seen used car salesmen present a more convincing image than Kerry.
Mr. Wilson's remarks are a little naive.
To say that Mr. Kerry opposed homosexual marriage is to take some of his comments at face value, ignore some other of his comments, and ignore entirely all his actions.
To say that abortion was not an issue is sort of partly true enough to sound good, but false enough to make the statement, as a whole, altogether untrue. Was abortion uppermost in every mind? No. Was abortion a significant issue for a large minority of voters? Absolutely. And what was the net effect of that? Each candidate gained some and lost some for his position on abortion, but the numbers I've seen show that President Bush gained more than he lost for his pro-life position.
This appears to be the case in most elections in most parts of the country.
Indeed, one can fairly say that President Bush's positions on moral issues, contrasted to Mr. Kerry's, were likely the positions that made that crucial 3% difference on Tuesday.
And when all is settled, that is probably the bottom line - the thieves vote democRat, while the productive tend to vote Republican.
Correction: Bush opposed gay marriage. Kerry, like on every other issue, took both sides depending on which way the wind blew.
Kerry lost because Hate & propaganda doesn't win an election. Because lies and rhetoric doesn't fool the American public (ie. Michael moore). Because American's know proven leadership and proven results, so why change?
LBJ's "great society" brought us the modern welfare state, complete with a generational hand-me-down effect - offspring of welfare recipients have a very high liklihood of living a similar lifestyle.
Credit goes to Newt and company for passing a version of welfare reform that at least scales back on the free-ride a bit. Perhaps this was one of the few times that Clinton signed a bill that helped the situation.
Kerry lost because he is the most liberal senator from the most liberal state in the country. Kerry is on the far left of the American political spectrum, which has most Americans trending to the right of center. The big question in my mind is not why Kerry lost, but how did he make it so close?
As a conservative, pro-life, (anti-Specter) born again Christian, I have to say that abortion was not the top issue for me. It was security/war on terror. But I think that the pollsters who seperated the war on terror from the war in Iraq are pulling a fast one. For most conservatives, the two wars are one and the same. It seems to be the liberals who like to differentiate between the war in Afghanistan (aka the war on terror) from the war in Iraq (aka the war for oil).
If one combines the two wars, then the number of votes supporting Bush because of the OVERALL war on terror is much higher than the numbers for the "values voters" --- which is not to denegrate nor downplay their importance.
There are too many reasons to enumerate. Abortion was a reason, gay marriage was a reason.... There is an unspoken reason, Kerry had no vision for America, his only vision was for himsself as president. He didn't know what he was going to do or how he was going to react so he couldn't convey that to the electorate. He was the proverbial "empty suit", there was just nothing there except ambition and self-love.
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