Amen!
And today was a good day...
Posted on 04/19/2003 4:20:39 PM PDT by MadIvan
Brandi, the younger sister of Private Jessica Lynch, begins her own military training this summer. In Wirt County, West Virginia, where America's most famous ex-POW will soon return home, there are not many career alternatives.
In the Lynch family's home town of Palestine, the one surviving small business, the "Whatnot Shop", scrapes by on sales of ceramic roosters, third-hand sewing machines and a selection of stuffed animals. Like many other businesses in the United States, it isn't hiring. Unemployment in the area is well over double the national average, which is already high. The logging and construction industries are in steep decline. Wirt County, with a population of 6,000, is all but bankrupt. Never mind Baghdad, say the locals. What price the economic reconstruction of rural West Virginia?
Last week, similar sentiments were being heard across the United States, as senior Democrats cheerfully emerged from their bunkers after months of edgy silence over the war in Iraq. Robert Byrd, the senator for West Virginia, even travelled home to underline a point notoriously made at the expense of President George W Bush's father, before an election 12 years ago: "It's the economy, stupid."
In New Hampshire, where the first presidential primaries for 2004 will take place early next year, Richard Gephardt, the labour unions' candidate, let it be known he was "furious" at the shaky state of America's finances. The House of Representatives minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said that now the war is over, Americans would "get back to round-the-dinner-table issues", such as jobs and affordable health care, during the coming campaign.
President Bush has splendid postwar approval ratings of 71 per cent, his highest for a year. Yet his opponents appear remarkably chipper. They believe they have acted out this election script before, and won handsomely. In the summer of 1991, President Bush's father emerged from a successful war against Saddam Hussein with ratings that the Iraqi dictator himself would have been proud to engineer.
During the subsequent 16 months, Bush senior dropped a record 57 points in the polls, bottomed out at 32 and was routed in the presidential race by Bill Clinton, a little-known politician from Arkansas. As the "liberator of Kuwait" lost by six million votes, the famous "It's the economy" slogan entered into political folklore.
As conventional wisdom has it, the first President Bush lost the peace because unemployment was rising, economic growth was sluggish and federal deficits were alarming. With his eyes on the desert horizon, the commander-in-chief had failed to attend to, or even notice, the most important battlefield in American politics: the domestic economy.
One week or so after the end of his own successful - and presumably definitive - encounter with Saddam, George W Bush also presides over an economy suffering from rising unemployment, sluggish growth and even more alarming deficits than 12 years ago. Gleeful opponents describe the similarities as "eerie". The temptation to draw parallels is forgivable, especially for an opposition yet to score a serious victory over the President since the attacks on the World Trade Center. But it would be a mistake to assume that history is about to repeat itself. For one thing, as Saddam discovered, the Bush family tends to learn from its mistakes.
An internal memo recently circulated to Republicans reads: "2003 is not 1991. Focus on jobs . . . shape the economic debate." Last week in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush gave the first of a series of speeches promoting a tax cut package worth a minimum of $550 billion. This measure, claims the White House, would create 1.4 million new jobs, if brought immediately into effect.
Later the President was in St Louis, giving the same message. Over the next two weeks, 26 Administration officials will deliver speeches on the economy across the United States. Republican Senators balking at the prospect of an even higher federal deficit have been told that the President will play "hardball" to achieve his tax-cut. This White House knows how to be relentless.
The measures will take time to work, if indeed they work at all. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in these pages last week, America's economy is undeniably in bad shape. The stock market is down by almost 30 per cent from when the President took office. A budget surplus has turned into a deficit of $400 billion.
Two million jobs have been lost. Economic growth between 2000 and 2002 was the lowest for a three-year period since - yes - the time of the first Gulf War. But no one will be able to accuse this President of blithely ignoring the problem.
President Bush can also rely on his political adviser, Karl Rove, who has earned a reputation for wrongfooting the President's opponents. Mr Rove is the senior adviser to the President in the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. He is widely credited with masterminding the success of the Republican Party during last autumn's mid-term elections, when President Bush, on the verge of war with Iraq, rallied the patriotic vote in swing states across America.
In the coming months, Mr Rove's strategic mission is to drive home the message that, in the wake of September 11, and pace 1992, "it's not just the economy, stupid". As President Bush began his tax tour, Mr Rove told American newspaper editors: "When this war ends, we will still have a very dangerous enemy in the form of international terrorism. It's not going to be, like, 'Iraq is over. America can withdraw within itself again'."
The first President Bush, even had he wanted to, could not have made the same argument. Two years before Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Berlin Wall had fallen, bringing the Cold War to an end. America had won. The philosopher Francis Fukuyama made his name by suggesting that political history had ended with a resounding victory for liberal democracies. Saddam was a playground bully to be contained. Hardly anyone had heard of Osama bin Laden.
No American thinks like that now. President Bush is, overwhelmingly, the leader they trust on matters of national security, which matters a great deal. With that crucial side of the electoral equation secure, the Bush Administration can devote itself to dealing with what Mr Rove likes to call the question of economic security.
The President has until 2004 to deal with a sliding scale of approval among American voters. According to the latest New York Times poll, just over 79 per cent of voters think he has handled the crisis with Iraq well. Just under three-quarters approve of his handling of the presidency overall. Only 46 per cent believe that he has so far made the right decisions about the nation's economy.
The figures, taken in the round, are very good. But if President Bush is to avoid the calamitous fate of his father, he could do worse than to find some jobs for the neighbours of Private Jessica Lynch.
Because he said he would.
He, Karl Rove, and Rasicott (sp) have made some really bone headed moves, and seem to continue to do so with Education, CFR, the assualt weapons ban, and now the RNC courting gays. Each item while triggers for the single issue folks who are luckily in a small minority, aren't sufficient to keep the base at home. But the compilation of all, especially if added to from now until the election could cause enough harm for enough of the base to sit one out and by default throw the election to the DemocRATs.
I hope not, but someone in the planning rooms better start paying attention. The right is not nearly as forgiving or as forgetful as the left.
They get tired of playing with themselves over at Scumbag Underground and Puberty Forum so they stop by here to stir up mischief.
My advice, Skooz, is to not engage these mice in any discourse at all. It just plays into their hands, IMO. I think it would be best to ignore them until they end up back in their own little circle jerk.
Regards,
LH
There Will Be No 1992 Redux
April 17, 2003
The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen, plan to attack President Bush on the economy in the coming months, in the hope that his postwar surge in the polls will plummet when voters refocus on job losses and weaker business activity, according to Donald Lambro in the Washington Times. This is a continued takeoff on the whole notion that the Democrats are hoping and praying for a rerun of 1992. All they have is a hope that history repeats itself.
"Bush's irresponsible tax plan, continued job losses, rising costs, and diminishing hopes for a quick economic recovery have had a disastrous effect on our nation," said the DNC chairman, Terry McAuliffe. "We have nine experienced presidential candidates blanketing the issues, and the economy is going to be at the forefront of these issues."
Now to counter this, Terry Jeffrey has a piece, entitled, "Is Bush Unbeatable?" He compares the circumstances in 1992 to the circumstances of today and what he finds is really devastating for the Democrats. If they're hoping for a replay of 1992, they are not going to get it. You can hear me read this to you in the audio link below, as Jeffrey catalogues differences. But then he gets to a very interesting paragraph:
"Third, Clinton blamed Bush I for a bad economy. Even though the economy grew throughout 1992 and was growing at a 5.4% pace on Election Day, Democrats then had virtually the entire national broadcast media except Rush Limbaugh backing up their economic mythology. Now, Limbaugh is flanked by conservative voices all over national radio and TV."
This is the root of my optimism, my friends. People always say, "Rush, why are you so optimistic? The Democrats are making hay. Look at the media. The media takes everything the Democrats say and reports it as true." The fact is that back in 1992, this program was it, in terms of national conservative media.
Now look at what's out there. All of talk radio is conservative. We have the Fox News Channel, and there are conservative magazines and websites that didn't exist then. It's gotten so bad that the Democrats think they've lost control of the media. Things are not as they were in 1992, folks. Yet the Democrats are praying for a rerun that cannot happen.
It's more than a weak bench. It's a rotting bench.
Amen!
And today was a good day...
Can you give me the exact instance of this. At least the speech saying so? Please? Otherwise you sound like my Godchild...'I want it now!!! Because my daddy said so!!. That little three year old got her arse reddend from me. So You prepared to elaborate?
Let's say I agree with your premise. How does the election of Hillary/Gephardt/Daschle/The Little Weasle from Carolina to the Presidency further your conservative goals?
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it.”Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything."I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'
"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
~~ Ronald Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life.
Yeah, that's it, we are all communist plants, and socialist screw worms from that other site, (actually I have never been on that site, whatever the hell it is, and have never brought it up, never). But our agents are everywhere........
:O
The economy is better than it was in '92; it was better in '92, than the conglomerate of CBSNBCABCCNN and the N.Y. Slimes,L.A.Grimes,and the Washington comPost let on. Those days are over; happily.
Yeah, big boy...you show 'em; stay home on election day. That'll REALLY prove something; just what exactly , is patently obvious...YOU'RE STUPID !
One issue voters, those who claim to be " MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN THOU ", throw out " neo-con " as an impugnation, and can't see the forest for the trees, should NEVER vote anyway. WHY ? Becuase you've less political understang than the cretins on DU; that's why. And, you aren't Conservatives at all; just a pack of whiney children, who only imagine that they know what they're talking about, when it comes to politics and who didn't think that Reagan was a Conservative either, until after he left office.
This is certainly true, although I believe that Bush and Rove are doing a better job than most other recent GOP administrations and campaigns.
One of the earlier posts in this thread gave the quote from Reagan about the need to compromise in politics in this country, as by design, no group has complete power. It is better to win and get 70-80 percent and move on, than to lose it all.
I also think it is easy to forget how difficult circumstances have been in this administration. From the outright unethical and continuous attacks of the Democrats, to the fact that the country really was fairly evenly split at the start of this administration, to the incredible economic hits caused by the attacks of 911, to the bad economic scene left over from the Clinton administration, to the need to fight two wars in just a couple of years, to the very real threat of unleashed WMD, what has actually been accomplished is unbelievably amazing.
If someone had said at the end of the Clinton administration, that in just a little over two years the GOP administration would accomplish what actually has been accomplished, no one would have dared to believe it.
So I am hopefull for the future, but realise the many pitfalls that are there.
I believe that most (if not all) of these "I'll-never-vote-for-Bush-again" posters did not vote for George W. Bush the first time. Mostly, these people are disenfranchised Democrats who now call themselves "libertarians" because they don't have the guts to completely disavow their past and vote for the only viable alternative, the Republican Party. They were born and raised in Democrat families and, though they are disgsuted and repulsed at being affiliated with the party of taxes, abortion, welfare, handgun banning, race quotas, the feminization of the miltary, and elementary school "fisting" classes, they are too weak to make the full transition. And it is these people who are most easily provoked by the true scumbag infiltrators who show up here by design for the purpose of stirring up animosity toward Bush.
See, FreeRepublic.com is the single most powerful political forum on the internet, and the scumbag Democrats most definitely have operatives posting here for the sole purpose of disruption and mischief-making. And naturally there's always the rogue scumbags who pop over from Scumbag Underground just to freelance. I've been around here a long time and this is nothing new. Fortunately, these mice really do end up talking to, and convincing, each other!
Like I said, they end up right back in their own little circle jerk.
Regards,
LH
You have NO idea what any Conservative politician would and would NOT do. You wouldn't have signed it and that's because YOU are a poltical naif.
YOU'RE STUPID !
Becuase you've less political understang than the cretins on DU; that's why. And, you aren't Conservatives at all; just a pack of whiney children, who only imagine that they know what they're talking about, when it comes to politics and who didn't think that Reagan was a Conservative either, until after he left office.
134 posted on 04/19/2003 9:08 PM PDT by nopardons
Keep going, I like watching fools like you. Thanks.
Are you an idiot?
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