Have we become strangers in our own country?

Sun-Sentinel ^ | 11/7/04 | Howard Goodman

[Jacvin]

If you look at a map of the election returns, we are a sliver of blue, while almost everywhere else but some snowy states near Canada and the weird West Coast has turned a glowing, bloody red.

We're more isolated than ever, Palm Beach County.

We're blue, along with Broward and Miami-Dade, surrounded by red counties in a red state in a mainly red nation.

While most of us voted D, we watched the Senate and House become more emphatically R. We saw W declare his 51 percent a "mandate" to move full-speed farther to the right.

You saw the stunned, sad look on people all week.

How could we be so out of touch with the rest of the United States?

Since when did we become strangers in our own country?

Call it the blue-county blues.

One thing that's obvious to me: We blue-territory people have to do a better job of understanding the red.

To make a start on that, I called on a man who might have been the hardest-working person in Palm Beach County for George W. Bush. He's Jack Furnari, 47, a Boca Raton activist and the county party's 2004 Republican of the Year.

As the election neared, the furniture-business retiree grabbed two short naps in four days. He got no sleep at all in the last 48 hours.

He handed out 2,000 self-designed palm cards. He paid for a phone bank that made 2,000 calls.

He paid for and put up 3,000 Bush signs, including those of his own design that said, "Bush Cheney '04 Because I Love America."

It was a brutal fight, he says. While campaigning, he was hit in the face with a rock. Someone yelling "[Expletive deleted] Bush!" nailed him in the chest with an egg.

[randita]

Can someone please explain morals values vs. religious values to them!

It's impossible to explain to someone that faith is a lifestyle, not just a mantle you throw over yourself to appear pious when the situation warrants.

[Jacvin]

I spent ten minutes pointing out how smart the President was.

It was only after he asked me three times that I admitted he wasn't that artculate, but I said it didn't matter.

I said that being a good Bullsh** artist isn't what we needed in a President.

I even said if the President was so dumb then how come the Dems keep losing to him.

How dumb are they?

Of course that's not what was communicated in the story though.

[Jacvin]

Thanks, but I'm just one of the million peole on the street that fought this fight.

So many people gave everything they had and I saw it firsthand.

I'm still giddy. I'm so happy.

[Issaquahking]

The idiot just doesn't get it!

Thank you for being a great team player!!! I couldn't even get in the ball park with you this last election! However, I did manage to get four days of doorknocking in, and worked on doing "party legwork" in the field!
Looks like our efforts to help "get the vote out" worked as we came to the polls in record numbers.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

What he doesn't understand is that MOST people are in the red. Were it not for massive voter fraud and other factors keeping some "red" voters away from the polls, we would have taken the executive office during the klinton years.

Not to mention Ross Perot in 1992

[The Loan Arranger]

"Let's list the faiths that consider abortion a good idea. Almost all of them are nothing more than liberal Democrat interest groups masquerading as "religion.""

Let's see: 'Wicca', Unitarians, Satanism, Voodoo, Paganism, some branches of modern-day Methodism, 'Scientology'....any more I'm missing? Maybe Michael Moore will start a religion; The Secularly Revealed Cinematic Truth Cult of the Exalted Pie Hole.

[dinasour]

They can't understand what the statement "because I love America" means to us.

They find this especially obnoxious because the truth hurts.

Bush is obviously a good person, but the left's absolute, viseral hated of him was not irrational.

They hated him because he looked like America. When they say, "I hate Bush", they mean "I hate America". When they say, "Bush is dumb", they mean, "America is dumb".

Kerry was nominated precisely because he was the most anti-American, and un-American candidate, not because he was the most "electable". He was nominated, not in spite of the the fact that he had objectively committed treason against the United States, but because of it.

[reformedliberal]

We were cheated and it was student fraud. Because it involved a lot of double voting in 2 states and we cannot access all state databases, we cannot prove it. The Western part of the state borders IA and MN and we suspect cross-border multiple voting.

In the 3rd district, for example, two state legislative races were won by conservatives, yet the national offices went D and a local school bond referendum, opposed by a majority of taxpayers, was passed. How did this happen? One theory is that the students didn't vote in the State elections, did vote for Kerry and Finegold, and since referendums are spelled out on the ballot, they voted yes.


DH works in a building filled w/lawyers, many of them Donks, one the head of the local D party. These people no longer try to hide that they are Communists, BTW. They are proud of that! They were not happy about the referendum, since their taxes are going to go up. All they can do is fiddle w/the funding schedule. I am not in that city, so I don't recall all the details.

We need more Federal Election Reform.

WI is still being counted. Until we have counted all the military absentees and dealt with the provisionals, we do not know the official count. Our margin of loss is declining as the counting progresses, though. I doubt we win WI, but that ugly blue blotch sure needs to be eradicated. It centers on the universities, with pseudopods of professors and old hippies who live in the country and commute, accounting for much of the blue in the rural counties.

At a victory party last night, one woman told us how her boss has ridiculed and harassed her for standing up for her support of W for the last year. The boss has not been back to work since Tuesday! People realize we cannot sit back in the upcoming elections. For now, I expect the Christian conservatives to continue being politically active. I had some worries about that, frankly. The young parents were especially outspoken about continuing to work to get the Ds out of power.

One thing I noticed was that people who up til now have not bothered w/sat TV or Internet are determined to do so. They have been relying on taping Rush for their news and were remarkably well-informed, even w/out other alternative sources. Plans for local websites and email lists were being discussed, as well, so that was an incentive.

The continued delusions on the alphabet nets and WPR/NPR are helping to keep people motivated. Folks are no longer shocked by the anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-rural diatribes. They are not even angry. They are simply determined.

Anecdote/not data: this was a small sample of people, but I was impressed with the strength of their committment to continue working for change in Western WI.

[MeekOneGOP]

Way to go, Jacvin!

Howard Goodman's column is published Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
He can be reached at hgoodman@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6638.

[JasonC]

"when did we become strangers in our own country?"

When you decided it wasn't your country and that you hate it and despise everything it stands for and everything that made it great. Its the lack of patriotism, stupid.

[Grampa Dave]

Superb reply to this hater of America.

"when did we become strangers in our own country?"

When you decided it wasn't your country and that you hate it and despise everything it stands for and everything that made it great. Its the lack of patriotism, stupid.

[MissAmericanPie]

They are strangers, strange, and the enemy in the gate. That gate swing outward, they should take advantage of it and leave our shores along with their Islamic radical brothers.

[MissAmericanPie]

"If blue-state people want to reach out to red-state people, Furnari has some advice."

Stop throwing eggs and rocks at innocent Americans exercising their free rights to elect a President. Stop burning, vandalizing, Republican headquarters and attacking the workers there. Stop calling in bomb threats, threatening theater owners for showing conservative documentaries, stop acting like Al Queada terrorists and accept the fact that your unrealistic fantasies do not fly with the average American that see you as anything other than intelligent or elite.

[AZ GRAMMY]

Dunno. But why don't you maybe find some island and start your own country where you'll feel right at home?

There is already an island paradise 90 miles off the coast of Floida, the depressed leftists should feel right at home there.

[dalight]

What an interesting article. Its always amazing to me to watch some journalist add up a column of powerful points well made and draw a line under it and come to a completely off of the wall conclusion. 1+1=0 That is zero understanding.

Well done, Jack.

[Jacvin]

Notice, he didn't condemn the violence by leftist thugs.

[MissAmericanPie]

Yes, he sure seemed to skip that part.