Posted on 08/08/2003 8:44:48 AM PDT by F_Cohen
Where Are All The Bush Bashers?
By Lowell Phillips
August 10, 2003
ToogoodReports.com
News Flash: Liberals Hate George W. Bush
Actually this isn't news. It doesn't take much effort to find examples of the seething animosity for the White House's current occupant. It's far more difficult to find someone who opposes the president that doesn't speak in wild hyperboles, foretelling the end of the world, and in serious danger of a stroke. So visceral has it become that the media and pollsters are speaking openly of it.
A recent New York Times piece, "Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds," examined the phenomenon and likened the sentiments to those held by conservatives for former President Clinton and referenced a pollster from the campaign of Bob Graham,
"Geoff Garin...said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was 'as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling,' and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon."
If this is true, which it clearly is, why hasn't the press glommed onto some cutesy little derogatory term like, oh I don't know, "Bush Basher?" There couldn't be any bias going on here, could there? Since they're making the comparison to conservatives who opposed Bill Clinton, and for years made liberal use (pun intended) of the term "Clinton Basher," it would only be "fair and balanced."
Allow me to answer my own questions. They would find a term like "Bush Basher" to be unjustified because they see the visceral opposition as substantive and accurate, whereas "right-wing" condemnation of Clinton was an indication of mania. The malady was recently diagnosed in a study by four college researchers, (Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition) published in the May 2003 edition of the Psychological Bulletin, which characterized conservatism in general as an illness whose victims include Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan.
The study was surely welcomed as verification of what the left has always known about conservatives, that they are mentally ill. No surprise that the supposed science of psychology would come to the rescue. Where would the left be without this highly politicized field of study turning the world, and nature itself, on its head?
There can be no argument that the feelings held by conservatives for Clinton were, and are, not exactly warm, but they could scarcely be called "hate" and hardly be considered irrational. Clinton came to Washington as someone who actively avoided military service and demonstrated his opposition to U.S. Cold War policy by visiting Moscow. Some of us had a bit of a problem with the man being commander-in-chief, with the power to order others to do what he would not. Showing solidarity with our Cold War adversaries, in the capital of an empire that killed 30 million or more of its own people was not ingratiating either.
Bill arrived on the national stage as a verifiable philanderer and moral train wreck, who expected us to believe that he had smoked pot "once... but didn't inhale." He and his wife were deeply involved with a tiny group of friends in a corrupt land deal, many of whom became convicted felons, but we were expected to believe they were squeaky clean. There was that cattle-futures thing. And Clinton's first presidential victory hinged on a much repeated, though easily verifiable lie about "the worst economy in 50 years."
Once in the White House, the Clintons somehow happened to acquire hundreds of confidential F.B.I. files on potential opponents, a felony every one, and subpoenaed Rose Law Firm records missing for years. They ransacked the office of friend and Whitewater associate Vince Foster, just after he was found with his brains blown out, before law enforcement could search it for evidence.
On President Clinton's watch, either by accident or design, our nuclear and ballistic missile secrets found their way into Communist Chinese hands, while coincidentally the Clinton/Gore camp was receiving mountains of illegal campaign contributions from them. The information allowed the kindly Chinese, for the first time, to accurately target American cities, and it has since filtered down to North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and beyond.
He rented out the Lincoln Bedroom and, thanks to media deference, effortlessly brushed off a series of sexual harassment and rape charges. Bill lied under oath in a doomed court battle against Paula Jones, bald-faced lied to the American people about Monica Lewinski, while whining about "private behavior" and claiming to be protecting the Constitution.
Our esteemed President Clinton also jokingly commented on drug use and his underwear in a televised forum with teenagers. He ignored a growing terrorist threat for eight full years. And on the way out the Oval Office door, by any reasonable evaluation, sold presidential pardons to fugitives and convicted felons.
Who could bash a leader like that?
Now, why is there this "disdain" for George W. Bush?
To begin with, his name is "Bush" and he was born "with a silver spoon in his mouth," strangely never a problem for someone with the name "Kennedy," or "Roosevelt." He won the 2000 election "fraudulently" by adhering to the Constitution and established election laws. He somehow managed to "steal" the nation's highest office by tricking Florida voters in Democrat controlled areas, with a long-used, Democrat designed "butterfly ballot," by stopping the Florida Supreme Court from re-writing election laws after the fact, and by assuring that military ballots would be counted.
Since Bush has taken office, he has spoken of good and evil, and (horror of horrors) proclaimed his faith in G-d. He has promoted the radical notion that the American people's money is theirs, not the government's, and enabled them to keep more of it. And W. abandoned the comforting security of zero-defense against ballistic missiles and the Kyoto Protocols, intended to save us from the dire, though unproven, threat of global warming. And to think, Kyoto would only have cost us our economic stability and national sovereignty.
After the 9/11 attacks, rather than using the liberal methods of conflict resolution and asking what we did to make terrorists hate us, Bush made war on our enemies. He decided to move against Iraq after only a decade of inaction, 17 resolutions, and against the wishes of Saddam's business partners in France, Germany and the United Nations. Moreover Bush deviously used intelligence and conclusions accepted the world-over.
Mr. Bush "disengaged" from the Mid-East peace process until new Palestinian leadership emerged, freezing out that lovable old mass-murderer Yasser Arafat. He undermined the brilliant Clinton-Carter North Korean payoff peace plan that Pyongyang had cheated on since day one, by saying that Pyongyang had cheated since day one. He shamelessly took a joyride on a fighter jet. He should have known that grand entrances on naval vessels are reserved for every other chief executive in memory, and assorted congressional leaders.
To top it all off, George W. Bush drives a pickup truck and occasionally fumbles with words.
The fiend! Who could not despise him? Who more richly deserves bashing?
While it's clear that right-wingers, in the grip of mental illness, unjustly attacked poor Bill Clinton, as we can see the label "Bush Basher" could not be more honorable.
Be not timid. Say it loud. Say it proud. You may just save the world.
I was dumbfounded and said - "What are you apologizing for?! Of course I hate that bastard! Anybody with a brain should hate that bastard!"
We didn't talk much politics after that.
Ping to the Broken Glass Republican!
I guess his Daddy just bought him that MBA, huh?
sheesh
Do you have an MBA?
Don't confuse "articulate" with smarts. Bush has outfoxed the Democrats at every turn, to the point where all they've got now are 16 words, which, it appears, have fallen off the radar, and Florida 2000.
Howard Phillips is well-spoken, but has a face ony a mother could love and will never get elected to anything.
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