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REAGAN-LIKE LANDSLIDE EYED
New York Post ^ | 6/10/04 | DEBORAH ORIN

Posted on 06/10/2004 12:19:49 AM PDT by kattracks

June 10, 2004 -- NOW is a good time to look back at the landslide win that sent Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, because lots of analysts think 2004 could turn out the same way — close for a long time and then suddenly breaking wide open. In 1980, the break came just days before the vote, when Democrat Jimmy Carter finally agreed to debate. Reagan came off as sunny instead of scary and when he admonished Carter with a smile, "There you go again," it was all over.

Like President Bush, Carter faced voters nervous over both the economy and foreign policy and wondering whether it's time for a change — in Carter's case, skyrocketing inflation at home plus the endless Iran hostage crisis.

But there's a big difference, since Carter kept getting bad news on both fronts, while Bush is starting to get good news on both the economy, with a surge in new jobs, and Iraq, with international support for the June 30 transfer of power.


(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: landslide
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To: Dont Mention the War

The problem is that GW needs a mandate. If the American people vote for him in droves, he'll know that he has our support. If he squeaks by, he'll be uncertain.


41 posted on 06/10/2004 3:37:31 AM PDT by risk
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To: Hostile

Kerry's problem is that he can only say that he would do all of what Bush is doing only better! Now there's a good reason for people to support him.


42 posted on 06/10/2004 3:42:12 AM PDT by gakrak
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To: risk
If he squeaks by, he'll be uncertain.

A cecond term gives him nothing to lose, no matter how close. His problem will be to contain his policies to be inclusive of all American's and not be wreckless with his nothing to lose status.

43 posted on 06/10/2004 3:45:47 AM PDT by joesbucks
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To: kattracks

Whistling past the graveyard?


44 posted on 06/10/2004 3:48:13 AM PDT by jaime1959
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To: Lancey Howard
The Democrats cannot compete if they depend solely on their traditional base of single welfare mothers, athiests, condom throwers, abortion enthusiasts, government-addicted minorities, gold-chained union thugs, screeching feminists, college professors, Hollywood drunks, America-hating malcontents, and all the rest of society's losers, parasites, and weirdo

They have another face to their constituency and the numbers are daunting. It means Kerry wins 25% of the vote before Bush gets out of bed on election day. It means that Bush must win 68% of the remaining sane folks if he is to reach 51%.

Blacks: 92% of 12% = 11.04 Hispanics: 75% of 12% = 9.00 Gays: 85% of 3% = 2.55 Jews: 80% of 3% = 2.40 TOTAL: 25%

This is why Kerry does not think he needs the south apart from Florida and New Mexico. This is why Bush cannot make a real dent in the Gore states.

45 posted on 06/10/2004 3:52:08 AM PDT by nathanbedford
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To: risk
The anti-Christian anti-Americans need to know that they are not just opposed by the devout.

That's simply not the case. Those who are Christiams do want to force their faith upon those who are not. Now it's simply in the realm of morales and specifically abortion and homosexuality. But in talking to many, especially the activists, they want to take it beyond that. Some have denominational dreams of superiority.

What you'll see if they begin to prevail is the same thing you saw when Clinton got tossed out of office on this site. The factions began showing their hands. While Clinton was in office, they pretty much had a focal point and that's what united them. When Clinton left, that's when the factional wars and the purges took place. The same one upmanship will take place in the Christian world that took place here.

46 posted on 06/10/2004 3:54:10 AM PDT by joesbucks
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To: risk

"If he squeaks by, he'll be uncertain".

OUR President has NEVER been uncertain...

His FIRST four years in office (I like the sound of that) proved that even with the slimmest of victories, he pushed forward a powerful agenda that has CHANGED the world.

President Bush is following in those huge foosteps left by the "Gipper"!

LLS


47 posted on 06/10/2004 3:56:55 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer ("I'm mad as hell, and I'm not taking it anymore"!)
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To: kms61

And a whole lot of new voter who'll be casting a straight democrat vote on a bilingual ballot...


48 posted on 06/10/2004 3:58:45 AM PDT by Meldrim
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To: Lancey Howard

Have to agree, also they aren't reproducing and endroctrinating duplicates of themselves.


49 posted on 06/10/2004 4:03:26 AM PDT by GailA (hanoi john kerry, I'm for the death penalty, before I impose a moratorium on it.)
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To: Dont Mention the War
Part of me wants a 2000-style squeaker victory, for the pure schadenfreude of watching the Democrats go completely psychotic. If it's a landslide, they'll merely be suicidal, like there were on Election Night 2002.

No, you don't. Squeakers disproportionately go to Dems, via vote fraud. The only reason Bush won in 2000 was the Dems slightly underestimated the amount of fraud needed, and freepers and others made sure they knew we would not tolerate election theft

50 posted on 06/10/2004 4:07:10 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (That which does not kill me had better be able to run away damn fast.)
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To: counterpunch
They will never be quiet, not ever. You will get this until the media is discredited to the point that they actually lose money and have to change. And even then they will just relent a bit.

A solid Bush win - even just 52% of the popular vote - would go a long way toward this.

I hate to admit it, but I really am beginning to think the polls are highly rigged. I am the last person to say this but I cannot believe that the country is really behind Kerry. I find it impossible to believe. I could be way out of touch, but it just seems so odd to me. He is one of the worst candidates the Democrats have ever put up.

51 posted on 06/10/2004 4:15:05 AM PDT by CasearianDaoist
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To: Glenn
It's easy to think that, but I know a lot of bright people who hate Bush more than they don't like Kerry. I can never get them to say exactly why they hate Bush -- they just do.

I also know many people like that, unfortunately too many in my own family. They never have any good reason for their hatred, but after long observation of them, and by living quite a few years in many of the Left's bastions (Boston, NY, DC, SF), I have a general theory.

It is intellectual pageantry. They are overimpressed with their own intellects, and feel that nobody exuding a folksy commonsense 1950's sense of decency can possibly have a clue as to the nuanced sophistication of modern-day knowledge and current societal paradigms. They are "progressives", in their own minds, because they have moved on from the simplistic world view held by dinosaur Republicans living in "Leave It To Beaver" Land.

Every time I hear a liberal caller to a conservative talk show, I hear the exuberant smugness of intellectual superiority in their voices. Never mind that they uniformly get dissected and splayed out for all listeners, they go back to their liberal friends - and mischaracterize the "battle" as stumping the host.

My general response to them is that they are too smart by half, and that they are only part-way around the circle of wisdom. They hate to hear things like "The more things change, the more they remain the same." And they are completely flummoxed by people like P.J. O'Rourke - who was a Leftist long enough to see the general idiocy of their philosophy - and now can eviscerate liberals with a single sideswipe of his pen.

I think they all should be looked straight in the eye and told "You don't impress with your fashionable intellectual elitism, because it is absolutely no substitute for wisdom, nor a solid grasp of logic, facts and history."

52 posted on 06/10/2004 4:15:46 AM PDT by guitfiddlist (Hate is a DNC Family Value)
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To: counterpunch

Yes, but honor is not a factor considered by those who vote Democratic.


53 posted on 06/10/2004 4:15:58 AM PDT by Harris
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To: joesbucks
Those who are Christiams do want to force their faith upon those who are not.

I wouldn't call them Christians, and I don't think even a majority of those who call themselves Christians think this way. I think the professed theocrats are divided between two types:

  1. Those who are afraid for our culture and see it vanishing before their eyes; they blame the ACLU and the militant atheism for most of this "tragedy."
  2. Those who want to take advantage of the deep-seated beliefs of Americans to pursue the political gains they can make from it. There are only a few of these people. They have their dupes and their knowing supporters.
I'm more worried about the religious zealots who have Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky as their swamis than I am the first group of Christians I mentioned above. The rest of America's Christians are a national treasure. The theocrats miss the whole meaning of the Enlightenment and how important it was to our founding fathers, but the fact remains that most Americans were and still are Christians. Without Christianity, America wouldn't be what it is today.

There's a force destroying our Judeo-Christian culture, and it's called post-modernism. It's a new religion, and it's very friendly to Marxism. The Christian Right, e.g., Falwell and Robertson, think they can fight militant atheism and defend our culture. But they couldn't be more wrong. They haven't a clue about post-modernism, and yet it's everywhere. The best way to fight it is by demonstrating what postmodernism has done for France...

54 posted on 06/10/2004 4:20:54 AM PDT by risk
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To: Allegra

>>And while Bush kicked Gore's butt in those 2000 debates, Bush's speaking abilities have improved greatly since then.

In the last couple of weeks I saw Bush's extended Q&A with the press corps at a White House speech, and then his speech at the Air Force Academy graduation. I am convinced the Left actually belives their own agitprop about Bush, and are misunderestimating him. Bush will do very well in debates against Kerry.


55 posted on 06/10/2004 4:21:01 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (hoplophobia is a mental aberration rather than a mere attitude)
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To: Cyclops08
I predict African-Americans will sit this one out. Kerry still hasn't got any new minorities in his personal staff (maybe a butler).

His "Hispanic outreach" consisted of him saying "Yo quiero un cerveza, por favor." (I am NOT making this up!)

56 posted on 06/10/2004 4:21:06 AM PDT by Poohbah ("Mister Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" -- President Ronald Reagan, Berlin, 1987)
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To: Dont Mention the War
Part of me wants a 2000-style squeaker victory, for the pure schadenfreude of watching the Democrats go completely psychotic. If it's a landslide, they'll merely be suicidal, like there were on Election Night 2002.

I think I prefer "suicidal" to "renting a Ryder truck and buying fertilizer," but I also think that the latter is what the Democrats will do after they lose.

57 posted on 06/10/2004 4:22:41 AM PDT by Poohbah ("Mister Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" -- President Ronald Reagan, Berlin, 1987)
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To: risk

Christians believe our Human Rights come from God and not from Government. If you don't believe in God, you don't believe in the Declaration of Independence.


58 posted on 06/10/2004 4:25:09 AM PDT by johnb838 (When I hear "Allahu Akhbar" it means somebody is about to die.)
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To: risk

I totally agree, and even though I am not a Christian, I do recognize the anti-Christian crusade of the secularists, and I am against it.

I've always respected freedom of religion, and believe that it applies to all religious thought, even ones that do not include a cognative, free-willed diety.
Buddhists and Taoists belong to this larger group of athiests, just as Hindus and Zoroastrians belong to the group of polytheists.

I've never understood why monotheists believe they own the moral highground. I recognize and acknowledge that America is mostly a christian nation, just as it is mostly a white nation. Keeping that in mind, we all know the potential evils of tyranny of the majority.

Where I differ on religion, when it comes to the fundamentalist religious conservatives, is that I believe that government should remain absolutely, completely silent on issues of religion, to ensure that all religions are respected equally, and the free expression of no religion is inhibited.

I fully support President Bush in speaking about his own faith, because he has that right as an America citizen. What I do not support is when Congress makes laws involving religion. I actually agree with the 9th Circuit Court's decision on the Pledge of Allegianve, which I know is unpopular around here, but you have to keep in mind that "under God" was not part of the Pledge originally. It wasn't included until 1954, when Congress passed JR-243. It is unfortunate that we have to have this debate now because of what I consider to be a violation of the Establishment Clause in the first place. We are now in a position where Christians believe that religion is being attacked, and it is understandable that they would feel this way. But on this issue, given the history and circumstances, I do not see it as trying to remove God from the public square or the national dialogue, but rather returning to the proper place where government remains silent. Had the Pledge never bee altered in the first place, would Christians feel that they are persecuted by the lack of religious reference? Do Christians feel persecuted because there is no reference to God in the Constitution? Should God be recognized in a Constitutional amendment?

I don't think the lack of reference is at all the same thing as banning any reference. It is simply neutral, neither for nor against, neither endorsing nor denouncing, neither condoning nor condeming.

The unfortunate thing about JR-243 is that it was meant as a counter statement to the imposed athism by the Soviet authoritariams, but it's effect was actually the same, except the other side of the coin.

Had government stayed out of the religion business altogether, then the free discourse of religion could flow unhindered in the public square, without the interference of government.


59 posted on 06/10/2004 4:26:05 AM PDT by counterpunch (<-CLICK HERE for my CARTOONS)
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To: johnb838

That's complete nonsense.


60 posted on 06/10/2004 4:26:28 AM PDT by risk
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