What Makes The Bush Haters So Mad? (They're Two-Bong-Hit William Blakes?)

www.time.com ^ | Monday, Sep. 22, 2003 (They don't call it Time Mag. for nothing.) | By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

[okie01]

"Yes, I agree that Dubya may be perceived as betraying his class -- and thus rejecting the same elitism that the Democrats AND French seem to share...."

Bush has hardly betrayed his "class". As a member of a class used to expectant of achievement, he has succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation.

However, as a representative of "elitism", he is an utter failure. And this goes back quite away. Recall that, when he attended Yale, Bush did not socialize with the elitist snobs -- among the faculty or the student body. Indeed, he appears to have held the entire institution in some disdain.

But the telling point is when he went for his MBA at Harvard. The conformist position at Harvard was virulently anti-war and anti-military. The ROTC had been (or was in the process of being) kicked off campus. In this poisonous atmosphere, Bush ostentatiously wore his ANG flight jacket to classes -- sending a clear signal as to a.) his loyalties and b.) the despicable state in which he beheld the elitist left.

Subsequently, everybody who knows him says that the President has far more in common with the West Texas oil patch than with the Ivy League.

Which is just one more reason why the left hates him...

[SunStar]

Unfortunately, Bill Clinton was able to use his opposition's rabid nature to his own advantage, successfully playing the wounded party, victimized by the attack dogs of the right.

Bush will do the same thing.

[Uncle Hal]

LS-You are absolutely right. The liberal elite in the form of the mainstream media, prestige colleges, ABA,AMA, liberal politcians etc are out to destroy America as we know it. They are bound and determined to tear down anything connected to traditional American values, christianity and the core beliefs that made this country great. A good example was the 10 commandments brouhaha in Alabama. The mainstream media went ballistic and compared the judges actions to those of George Wallace standing in the school doorway. But yet a poll in USA Today (no friend of conservatives) ran a poll that indicated 77% supported keeping the 10 commandments in the court house. You would never have believed that if you had listed to the big name media.

[okie01]

We have our differences on Iraq, but that was an eloquent and passionate defense of the current Commander-in-Chief, in particular, and "Clinton-haters", in general.

It warrants applause. And I'm clapping...

[Burkeman1]

Bush will do the same thing.

Yes, Bush has and will try the same thing. That is the purpose of this article by the way. But the difference is that Bush has reason to feel wounded and victimized by a party of hypocrites and liars and doesn't have the media in his hip pocket (with the exception of the unwatchable and embarssing Fox News) like Clinton did.

[F16Fighter]

"Bush has hardly betrayed his 'class'. As a member of a class used to expectant of achievement, he has succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation ...[while] appears to have held the entire institution in some disdain." "

You may have misunderstood my thrust in as much as I concur with you totally your analysis.

The class elites and their liberal mein as you opine were totally rejected by Dubya, which indeed causes them to despise the man today.

[Burkeman1]

Thanks. The audacity of Democrats just amazes me. The Boston Globe was trying to stir up a "scandal" about Cheney and Haliburton the other day based on no evidence- not even circumstantial. How many times did the Globe and the rest of the media in this country not even comment on literally dozens of corrupt actions and deals by Clinton and his wife that had more than circumstantial evidence right in front of their faces? Every single Democrat could be made to look like fools by pulling quotes from them on the many Clinton scandals.

Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman, Gore, - not one has an ounce of crediblity.

Although I am not for this war in Iraq- I thank God it is at least run by a Republican and by a man who stives to be moral and decent.

[foreshadowed at waco]

I'm not sure that it is pathological to hate someone who exploits and then threatens to destroy women who open their mouths all the while claiming to be the peoples' president...also I can still see the curled bodies of the children at WACO who died from the poison gas lobbed into the building by Clinton's ATF...I despised Clinton but I also feared him since the press did not hound him out of office despite these 2 features of his presidency...under Clinton we seemed to lose a free press...the press became his cheeerleaders and defenders.

[okie01]

"You may have misunderstood my thrust in as much as I concur with you totally your analysis."

I understood your thrust. I just expanded on it, because it illuminated a piece of the truth.

Historically, Bush's class has stood for noblesse oblige and achievement. The leftist elite despises that concept and, instead, claims the pinnacle for themselves, based on their (supposed) intellectual (and moral) superiority.

Their claims aren't based on any kind of achievement, but on arrogance alone.

And, as you say, they hate Bush. Because, in their world, he should be one of them. But he rejected them, siding with the common people, the businessmen and oil field workers in Midland, Texas. Thus proving his "ignorance" and earning the everlasting animus of the leftist Ivy League elite.

I believe we both know these people and we share a common opinion of them.

[Arkady]

This must be the umpteenth story that relays how angry the left is about the stolen-election....well, there's lots of us who are still upset about the ungraceful way gore un-conceeded this clear victory, drug the country thru 37 days of agony and smeared the electoral process all in the name of power-grabbing.
Does anyone still really wish this robot had succeeded and led us against the war on terror? Or anything else? They were saved from their own short-sighted stupidity and this is the thanks we get.
We have a real president for the first time in a decade and it couldn't have come at a better time, no thanks to David Boiles and the morons in florida who can't read a ballot.
Kalifornia and florida should just be recused from any future elections until they learn the constitution and what it means to be an American.

[Braak]

Ditto to that! Pencil me in at Mel's House...

[.cnI redruM]

I tend to agree. Nixon did a LOT more pandering to the moderates than Bush. People who think Bush is a big government conservative have never taken any time to look at Nixon's largesse at the expense of the taxpayers.

With the exception of foreign policy, I'm not sure how much Nixon's agenda would have differed from Bill CLinton's or Al GOre's. He, not Gore, invented The EPA.

[IronJack]

I love the denial, the flimsy justifications we use to defend ourselves. OUR cause is always right, dontcha know? The people who hate Bush are unreasonable idiots, but those who pathologically despise Clinton are sane, well-rounded individuals.

If you can't look at yourselves a little more objectively, you're probably not doing yourselves or any cause much good. Blind zealotry is never to be envied.

For what it's worth, I despise Bill Clinton with every fiber of my being. But I've seen suggestions that he was responsible for everything from halitosis to the Lindbergh kidnapping. That kind of vitriol just makes the accuser look ridiculous. Kind of like a lot of Bush-haters look right now.

Bill Clinton was a bad man, and a bad president. The Right rejected him because he was so hostile to their values. The Left thinks the same of Bush: he is evil, unscrupulous, treacherous, and vile. Make no mistake, they think just as poorly of him as we did of Slick. And no amount of "We're right and you're wrong" is going to change their minds, any more than that argument changed ours during the Dark Years when the Arkansas Fellow Traveler sullied the White House.

[RobbyS]

Bill Clinton is an example of a man who has rejected his homeland--Arkansas--and migrated spiritually as well as
physically to the North East. But he is managed to mask his rejection of his home, much as a thoroughly anglicized Irishman might by retaining the right mannerisms. He has gone "North toward Home." like Wille Morris, the Mississippian author of the autobiography by that name. All that Clinton wants of Arkansas is a monument to his vanity.

[LS]

I do understand removing the 10 Commandments (which Christians, obviously, are not bound by anyway), because the LEGAL alternative would also be to have to permit verses from the Koran and the Bagavad Ghita. I don't think that's what we want.