National Review on our side, as well as Democrats and their fat cat donors on the other side, still don't get it. They still don't understand what happened in 2004.
But a hint of what we did to the Dems' fat cats is mentioned in the text quoted above.
You see, in poker, the object is to convince your opponents to bet big when they have lousy hands. Old pro's will go so far as to lie to newbies about how they have to have the guts to "bluff" if they want to win big money, and year after year new suckers fall for such nonsense by betting big when they have lousy hands.
And Election 2004 was a giant poker game. Now pause for a moment and consider that to win in 2004, all that GWB had to do was to re-win the same conservative Heartland states in 2004 that he won back in 2000. Actually, because the 2000 census shifted some 14 electoral votes in our favor, he could win *fewer* states in 2004 and still re-win his Presidency. So in the big picture, all that we needed was to win again in our old 2000 states in November of 2004.
In short, Election 2004 was ONLY about the 30 Heartland states that went for GWB back in 2000.
OK, so with that background on the election in mind, what Presidential Ticket did the Democrats present? They gave us the most liberal, leftist, do-nothing, Yankee, East-Coast Elitist Senator available. In poker terms for winning those 30 conservative Heartland states, the Democrats held a pair of threes.
They had a lousy hand.
Now for Election 2004, our first-tier goals were:
1. Win Bush's re-election,
2. Discredit the Corrupt Old Media, and
3. Burn the Dems' fat-cat campaign donors.
Our 2nd-tier goals were to increase our House and Senate margins while simultaneously taking control of more state legislatures and governorships. What we did in Georgia alone at the state level will be written about in future history books. Heck, even in the arguably liberal states of New York and California, Republicans hold the governorships there. We knocked off the Democrats' own Senate Minority Leader at the national level, too.
But to discredit the Corrupt Old Media and to likewise burn the Dems' fat-cat campaign donors, we had to convince the hardcore leftists to bet big with their lousy JFK-Edwards hand.
...And bet big they did. No one has raised more money, or run more biased news articles and shows than what the hardcore leftists managed to do in 2004. The Seattle Times, for instance, endorsed JFK for President by writing to their readers that no one should pay any attention to what JFK said, and that was their ENDORSEMENT! The NY Times ran more than 40 days of FRONT PAGE coverage of some rogue bi-sexual prison guards putting panties on the heads of vicious terrorsts, labeling the whole affair as some sort of fault of President Bush. More than 40 days on the Front Page! CBS went hook, line, and sinker for the forged Bush Guard Documents. The Washington Post even spiked the content of the Democrats' leaked Senate Judiciary Committee memos where they plotted to hold up one Judicial confirmation until *after* a particular case had been ruled upon by the old bench.
Soros, Bing, MoveOn, ACT, Gore, and a host of other fat-cats all anteed record amounts of money into the Election 2004 pot, too.
And then came November. Lo and behold, the Vietnam War protestor didn't win the Heartland states. Who woulda thunk it?! Heck, he even managed to perform WORSE in the Heartland than did VP Gore back in 2000! JFK lost New Mexico and Iowa (and pretty well lost Wisconsin).
The poker truism had held true again; the suckers who bet big with lousy hands had lost yet again.
Perhaps coincidentally (or perhaps not), that was precisely our plan from Day One. We won. We discredited the Corrupt Old Media. We burned the Dems' fat-cat campaign donors. We took control of more state legislatures. We increased our lead in the House and Senate, too.
Did we raise the most money? No.
Did we get the most positive press? No.
Did we know how to play our winning hand? Absolutely.