South Carolina Ping List
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Posted on 11/01/2004 6:38:00 AM PST by aomagrat
PRESIDENT BUSH has disappointed us in many ways.
He promised to be a uniter, not a divider. Yet faced with our nation’s second Pearl Harbor — a tremendous opportunity to set aside differences and pull the country together — he continued to pursue an ideological domestic agenda, from attacking affirmative action to dismantling environmental protections. And his policies have been not only divisive, but often destructive. Consider:
• Rather than asking us to sacrifice in a time of war, he has doled out tax cut after tax cut, and taken us from a nearly balanced budget to staggering deficits.
• Rather than cutting spending while cutting taxes, he has presided over the largest increase in the federal government since Lyndon Johnson — increasing federal spending on education (a state function) by 65 percent, and creating a whole new Medicare entitlement.
• His huge new initiatives often do more harm than good. No Child Left Behind penalizes South Carolina for setting high standards. His prescription drug plan forbids the government to use its leverage to cut prices.
• He has utterly failed (or refused) to see the connection between our nation’s absurdly gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels and our strategic position.
• He has alienated billions abroad just when we need more friends. Yes, there are those who don’t want us to do things we must do. But Mr. Bush’s father would have found ways to get more of the world behind us.
George W. Bush has but one saving grace, and ironically it arises from the very stubbornness that makes him so infuriating in other areas: We know that he will not be deterred in fighting the war on terror.
This is an essential trait in anyone who would lead this nation over the next four years — or the four years after that, and so on into the foreseeable future.
What was done to us on Sept. 11, 2001, and what we have done in Iraq starting in March 2003, have set our nation on a course that will have one of two results: the triumph of freedom and security in the most volatile part of the world, or a dark age of chaos in which no free country anywhere will be safe.
It is far past time to debate the wisdom of invading Iraq. We believed it was the right thing to do, based on 12 years of history and a 2002 U.N. resolution that only the United States and our coalition partners had the fortitude to enforce. But right or wrong, we now either follow through and help the Iraqis build a new nation, or leave that country and watch it replace Afghanistan as the new haven for those who would destroy us.
Has the president made mistakes in the war? Yes. He didn’t send in enough troops. He didn’t plan realistically for the aftermath. He failed to hold his own administration accountable for the outrage at Abu Ghraib.
But there have been astounding successes as well. Remember Afghanistan, where tribalism made democracy impossible? It just freely elected a president who is a close ally of this country. And even in Iraq there are important successes, from the handover of sovereignty to the handover of weapons by the Sadr militia.
More importantly, Mr. Bush gets the big picture. He understands that 9/11 was not just a crime, but one blow in a titanic struggle over the future of civilization. Sen. John Kerry has not convinced us that he gets this.
Sen. Kerry is a smart man, and has thoughtful views on everything from energy to diplomacy. As he often says, he has plans — and many of them are good ones.
But on an almost visceral level, something seems to be missing in his commitment to national and collective security. How can we entrust a nation at war to a man who voted against countering Saddam’s naked aggression in 1991; who voted to authorize the president to invade in 2002, then said he wouldn’t have done so knowing what he knows now, then said he would have done so knowing what he knows now; who voted against the $87 billion to support the Iraq effort, but, as he hastened to point out, only after he voted for it?
While Sen. Kerry says he will not bail out in Iraq, we fear in the end he will be pushed to that action. If the going continues to be tough in Iraq (and it will); if our sunshine allies don’t magically flock to help us after a Kerry victory (they won’t); and if a significant portion of the base that elected him continues to demand an immediate pullout (it will), will a President Kerry square his jaw and soldier on? We don’t know. But we don’t doubt the resolve of President Bush.
And in the end, that’s what it comes down to. Despite all our problems with President Bush, we have greater faith in him on the one issue that trumps all others.
If only we had a better option. But we don’t. At this critical moment, one of these men will be president. So it is that we endorse George W. Bush for another term.
Affirmative Action is racist and divisive.
I really get sick and tired of the MSM playing this game with the public that all political parties must be united all the time in politics. That is not how the system is suppose to work, and if the system did work like that then it would be more like "conformity" rather than "unity".
I wish the MSM who just shut the F.. up about this unity angle.
With friends like this, who needs enemas?
"We hate Bush, but Kerry makes us vomit."
Somebody please slap this journalistically-challenged media punk into sense. Email him that list of accomplishments of Dubya's in his first term. I somehow misplaced it in my files.
In my mind, these democrats have blood on their hands.
A very liberal editorial writer at the Chicago Tribune, Dennis Byrne, endorsed Bush today. He gave a dozen or so reasons. I was amazed.
So the "world" only loves us when we are dying?
Is that what US leftists are saying? That we were supposed to play the victim after 9/11?
Of course victimhood is where the leftists and the Islamic cults are most comfortable. (these cults claim to be "oppressed" by Israel and the US)
George W. Bush is NO victim, nor will he ever project victimhood.
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If they thought they could endorse Kerry, they would. The editorial staff over there (mostly) has to hide their liberal tendencies because of where they are. They're smart enough to know, though, that if they endorsed Kerry, nobody outside of the USC community and certain liberal/black enclaves in Columbia would ever buy their damn rag again.
So instead they can now say they endorsed Bush, but in a weasel manner. Which is how they do a lot of their editorializing...liberalism concealed under a veneer of "we're just conservative like y'all, really!".
}:-)4
"One of the most liberal newspapers in South Carolina endorses President Bush."
That sentence would be equally correct if you left out "one of." However, even a qualified endorsement by the State is a sort of victory for Bush.
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