Posted on 12/04/2004 2:43:46 PM PST by Huntress
Sally Field was widely ridiculed some years ago for gushing in her Oscar acceptance speech that: “You like me, you really like me.”
Post-election analysis is split about the reasons President Bush won re-election. Immediate reaction focused upon exit polls that seemed to show moral values as the deciding issue; later commentary has rejected that conclusion as the result of a poorly drawn question.
I don't know why Bush won, as people voted the way they did for any number of reasons. But one thing can safely be said about the election. To paraphrase Sally, the chattering classes hate people who voted for George Bush. They really do hate us.
Novelist Jane Smiley credits the election results to “the decision of the right to exploit ignorance in the citizenry.” She goes on to remark that she is originally from Missouri, and her relatives are Bush supporters. She says they voted the way they did not because they were stupid, but because of greed and “Republican feelings of superiority.” I hope she isn't headed to Grandma's for Christmas dinner.
Lawrence O'Donnell, a Democratic activist and a writer for the “The West Wing,” believes the blue states will consider secession from the Union. Geraldine Ferraro is willing to consider same, and points out that the red states will be in trouble without our blue state betters, as we “have no talent.”
No talent? Why, I know plenty of my neighbors who can chew tobacco and eat supper at the same time. Not only that, but we can hit road signs with Bud Light cans at 50 miles an hour. Maureen Dowd helpfully points out that Bush “ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq.” Columnist Paul Krugman decided we were voting about the “fate of America as we know it.”
The only argument seems to be over whether the correct metaphor is jihad or the American Civil War. Historian Simon Schama writes, “Not since the Civil War has the fault line between America's two halves been so glaringly clear, nor the chasm between its two cultures so starkly unbridgeable.” Smiley also prefers the Civil War as a metaphor, continuing her rant by comparing Bush voters to Quantrill's raiders.
Garrison Keillor is partial to a religious explanation for the election, and would solve the problem by denying “born again” voters the franchise. Syndicated columnist Tad Bartimus, whose column appears in The Star, says: “Fundamentalist Christians have launched a jihad here at home based on their version of family values — war over negotiation, ostracism over inclusion, fear over hope, paranoia over trust.”
These folks can sure teach us yokels the meaning of tolerance, all right.
It is a sign of how things have changed that the left has moved from standing up for the little guy to calling him a stupid, bigoted, religious nut. Might be that there is a lesson there, one that would stand the Democratic Party well, were it interested in winning elections rather than proclaiming its moral and intellectual superiority.
Jihad? For goodness sake, all Bush voters want is to be left alone on religious matters. Leave the Pledge of Allegiance alone and don't mess with marriage. Overturning Roe v. Wade would just return the abortion issue to the states, where it has always belonged. If the blue states are so confident of their intellect, talent, and the strength of their arguments, then they shouldn't fear a democratic solution to a problem that would lend itself to a compromise.
Of course, they might want to think about the demographic consequences. Out here in Jesusland, we're already breeding faster, and an abortion regime demarcated along red-blue lines would soon mean that our vote margins would be even larger.
In Iraq, true jihadists are beheading fellow Muslims. Around here, all people want to do is to continue to say “under God” when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Those hardly seem comparable, and when people like those I've quoted accuse conservatives of some sort of religious warfare, they lose all credibility, and any chance of winning the next election.
And the Civil War metaphor is just as overwrought. We have a two-party system, one that by its nature leads to conflict, and closely divided elections. It also tends to lead to compromise, and parties that move toward the center of where they perceive the electorate to be.
It has worked pretty well; I've seen no indication that it's broken.
I'm sorry, but the response of these folks can't be taken seriously. They're dissing everything and everybody I hold dear, and all I want to do is giggle.
I think they need a job, one that involves some physical labor, and one that leaves them little time to think. Because for all their condescension about their superior intellects, their contact with reality is fleeting. Their complaints are repetitive and extreme and, worst of all, boring.
As Adam Smith said, there is much ruin in a nation. It was only an election, after all, and there will be another one in four years.
Blake Hurst is a farmer and greenhouse grower in Tarkio, Mo. To reach Midwest Voices columnists, write to the author c/o the Editorial Page, The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108. Or send e-mail to
oped@kcstar.com.
bump
As tiresome as Reality TV.
Let them: "rather be right(in own minds) then president", they will never win another election
No, they always felt that way. They're just angry that the "little guy", many of whom I suspect are our military and aren't so "little," figured out who was on whose side.
***Jihad? For goodness sake, all Bush voters want is to be left alone on religious matters. Leave the Pledge of Allegiance alone and don't mess with marriage.***
THANK you, Sir. That needed to be said.
Excellent article.
(Man, those farmers are smart. According to Mr. Hunt's bio, he makes greenhouses grow. Who knew you could do that?)
“Republican feelings of superiority.”
Yeah! DUH! Reread the comments by Smiley, Dowd, Krugman, Ferraro, O'Donnell and let's not forget to include the likes of Ivans and Franken and Moore.
It's hardnot to feel superior!
They whine and moan about the oppression that is coming, yet they remain free to whine and moan and decry the people who are supposedly coming to take them away. They decry the intolerance of the opposition, and build their platform on a justification for their own jihad against them. Sounds like the dangerous lunacy of the loser.
It's going to be fun to watch the democrats heap scorn on the equally far left hillary for her disingenuous and calculated "centrist" and "third way" positions as she tries to repeat bubba's triangulated victories of the 90s.
The leftists sure do paint with a broad brush.
If they could only focus their white hot light of analysis on themselves and their own selfish party for a change, they might get a clue.
But of course, that's asking way too much of such brainwashed partisans.
In the last days ther will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and money. they will be boastfu and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control; they will be cruel and have no interest in what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. they will act as if they are religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. You must stay away from people like that.
They are the kind who work their way into people's homes and win the confidence of vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by many disires. Such women are forever following new teachings, but they never understand the truth. And these teachers fight the truth just as Jannes and Jambers fought against Moses. Their minds are depraved, and their faith counterfeit. But they won't get away with this for long. Someday everyone will recognize what fools they are, just as happened with Jannes and Jambres.
2 Timothy 3:1-9 (NLT)
Message to the Left: Take out the black vote and you would have lost 70% to 30%.
On this I must disagree with Mr. Hurst. If it is not broken now it soon will be because leaders of the party on the left no longer touch the center. They can not even see it.
When one side can see the middle and the other can not there can be no compromise reached.
bump!
excellent arguments in his article.
read later
It is a sign of how things have changed that the left has moved from standing up for the little guy to calling him a stupid, bigoted, religious nut.
They're just finally saying what they have always thought.
Actually, there is plenty of "talent" (i.e., smart people) in the red states. Here's how I know. I lot of them know how to do something most others can't. That is, raise not only enough food for themselves and their families, but the rest of the world as well. I know I can't do that, at least, not right now, even though I'm in a red state. I know I can do without Dior fashions or Gucci shoes or Broadway shows or The West Wing, but I can't do without grains and vegetables and meats. The blue states need the red states more than they think. O'Donnell, like a typical leftie, has it exactly backwards, and is 180 degrees wrong.
If the blue states are so confident of their intellect, talent, and the strength of their arguments, then they shouldn't fear a democratic solution to a problem that would lend itself to a compromise.
I suspect they aren't all that confident of their self-proclaimed intellectual and moral superiority. They front that illusion as just another mask they put on. When I've engaged liberals in serious debates, it lasts about five minutes, they sense they are losing on logic and facts, and inevitably lapse into name-calling, head-shaking, or eye-rolling. Leftists beat their chests and strut like peacocks when proclaiming they are "smart" and "superior", but it's all bluster and show. When called to task, they fold.
It has worked pretty well; I've seen no indication that it's broken.
Me neither. These people have lost an election, that's all. The army is still in it's barracks. Nobody has gone to jail. Nobody has been exiled or assassinated. But because the liberals are now completely out of power, at least for the next two years, they can't deal with it.
They could learn a lesson from the experience of those they denigrate as not being as smart as they are. We lost everything in 1992. The 'Rats ran it all. They had a near filibuster-proof margin in the Senate. Republicans had to pick up the pieces from the Bush 41 debacle, build a record of constructive opposition (using the ammunition Clinton and the 'Rats handed us), and in two years we had the House back for the first time in 40 years, and the Senate. Clinton then had to deal with our agenda (which he skillfully co-opted and claimed as his own and the media gave him credit for, but that's what skilled political manipulators do). If they waste their time whining, they'll lose even more in 2006 (one can only hope they do).
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