Scott: the article from the WT below is indicative for what it does not say. WT is the voice of the more movement conservative side of the GOP coalition. It sees the correlation of Clinton phobia and Bush phobia here but refuses to follow the ball all the way.
Republicans felt they had a lock on the White House and the South. The reaction to the 1992 election was emotional. Perot, Pappy Bush, the media, God...The Democrats were simply not entitled to the White House. They would not accept that if you took the Cold War and race off the table a fair number of suburbanites found the Democratic positions on cultural and domestic issues more palatable. A fair number more found the Bush recession more traumatic than the media reported.
Then came the miracle of 1994 with the GOP getting both Houses of Congress [real, not paper majorities]for the first time since Ike. OK. They had that paradigm - they would play by the rules of the old Democratic majorities in Congress. Silly rabbits. The Democrats were allowed to do what they did in Congress by the media because the media are biased, not because the institutional rules permitted it. Reverse which party holds which end of Pennsylvania Avenue and the media just changed the rules without skipping a beat [so Reagan was to blame for having the government close rather than accept rape by an intransigent Democratic Congressional leadership but the GOP Congressional leaders were to blame when Clinton was intransigent - the rule is bad republicans, not President must allow Congress a partial victory - media are insanely partisan and completely blind to it].
Rather than ruefully accept that decades of whining about a biased media was all true the GOP [or important elements thereof] had a tantrum. The impeachment may have been legally correct. It was politically moronic. They were lucky it only cost them the Senate instead of both Houses.
The Democrats saw Clinton as breaking the post 1960's GOP electoral lock on the White House but have never accepted the loss of Congress. They see themselves as divinely ordained to govern. By selective misreading of the polls this appears to be true. On more 'issues' than not most of the public is more with the Democrats than not. Key is that most issues do not actually move votes. Half the population doesn't vote. Roughly 40-45% of the rest are hardcore voters of EACH party. They vote for THEIR party or stay home but simply will not vote for the other side. Means turnout means more than accepted wisdom allowed for. Grassroots politics rather than stupid TV ads that few watch anyway. The rest must be polled for what actually moves them to vote rather than core belief structures. The Democrats simply will not accept that enough working class voters find their new age postmodern belief structure anathema. Abortion, guns, animal liberation, the visceral hatred of religion/the flag/traditional values. They can accept the suburban libertarians who vote lifestyle over wallet because they are educationally and socially close to such people. They cannot accept that a fair part of their 'natural' coalition finds Bush saying Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher quite acceptable. From FDR to LBJ the Democrats were the party of both heartland populists and the liberal-left. The lib-left was always upset at the compromises made to keep the populist and traditionalists in the tent. So they finally won the Democratic Party's internal civil war [1968-74] and have never grokked who they lost on their Long March. Bush, Gingrich, Reagan drive them equally into rage and conspiracy land. In their social circle they see their cultural views and values as mainstream. Nancy Pelosi should be the poster girl. Her House district has almost as many Nader as Bush voters and relatively few of each. Even the Republican members of the ruling elite actually share 90% of her cultural values however much they pander to the GOP voter base.
The Pelosis and the rest on one level won't accept the real America. On a 2nd level it scares them spitless. In the dim recesses of their minds they viscerally grasp that a George Wallace type heartland populist who isn't a segregationist fraud could sweep them all aside. Someday they might confront the nightmare - a USG where the opposition really wants to see them extinct. Look at what Perot did by accident.
The sport of Bush-bashing
By David Limbaugh
I've written before that liberals need anger management therapy, but their antipathy for President Bush has grown to the point that even The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz is writing about it.
Mr. Kurtz describes how Bush-hatred has been brought out of the closet by Jonathan Chait, a young editorial writer for the New Republic. Mr. Chait's hatred is caused by "Bush's radical policies... his unfair tax cuts... his cowboy phoniness... his favors for corporate cronies... his heist in Florida, and his dishonesty about his silver-spoon upbringing, and, oh yes, the way he walks and talks."
Mr. Kurtz says Mr. Chait's self-described antipathy toward Mr. Bush is so intense that "just seeing his face or hearing his voice causes a physical reaction.... My sister-in-law," says Mr. Chait, "describes Bush's existence as an oppressive force, a constant weight on her shoulder, just knowing that George Bush is president."
Sure, there were plenty of Clinton detractors, but the mainstream press was constantly railing against conservative "Clinton-haters" and their obsession. Until Mr. Chait, and now Mr. Kurtz, there has been little mention in the media about the pervasive Bush hatred.
Some on the left may deny the hatred, but how else do you explain the phenomenon of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's formidable popularity among the party rank and file? It's not what he stands for; it's whom he rails against. At this point, the former Vermont governor is riding to his party's nomination on the coattails of abject hatred toward the commander in chief.
Even USA Today and Gannett News Service reporters and editors noticed Mr. Dean's bitterness, asking him at a luncheon whether he is too angry to be president. Mr. Dean responded, "What we're really about is not anger, it's hope." But in the next breath he conceded: "Sure. There's a lot of anger at President Bush. The way President Bush has harmed us the most is... the loss of our sense of community ... He's a very divisive president."
Hmmm. Divisive, as in reaching out to his opponents like Sen. Ted Kennedy, only to be rebuffed, betrayed and castigated in return? These aren't my opinions alone. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Mr. Kennedy's "anger." Despite Mr. Bush's cordiality toward Mr. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat gives him back nothing but epithets, calling him a liar who has told "lie after lie after lie" about Iraq and charging Mr. Bush with consistently breaking his promises on education.
Can you believe this Kennedy guy? President Bush has thrown more federal money at education than any conservative can tolerate. There's just no working with these liberal senators. The new tone is a one-way proposition to which congressional Democrats are willingly tone deaf.
Liberals say their hatred for Mr. Bush is mainly directed at his Iraq policy and his tax cuts, but their rage against him greatly preceded his implementation of those policies. Indeed, it's the other way around. They distrust him on Iraq because they can't stand him. And their fervent hatred of Mr. Bush has also blinded them to the nature of his tax cuts.
They say Mr. Bush has misrepresented the cuts as benefiting the middle class. But it is undeniable the lower- and middle-income groups received a greater percentage cut than the wealthy. Why can't liberals be honest about that? And speaking about misrepresentations over middle-class tax cuts, why didn't they slam Bill Clinton over his insincere and failed promise to implement a middle-class tax cut?
Their angst really stems from one simple fact: Mr. Bush took back the executive branch from them, which they view as an entitlement, even to the point of their irrational rantings about him being an unelected president — not just because of Florida, but because he didn't win the popular vote. They have no respect for the constitutionally mandated Electoral College.
And they have the temerity to say Mr. Bush shouldn't try to implement his agenda because he didn't receive a mandate, apparently wholly oblivious to the fact Mr. Clinton never received a majority of the popular vote either.
And speaking of temerity, the haters' criticism seems to center on Mr. Bush's supposed lies. What's this new-found judgmentalism about lying? Nothing represents a greater turnaround in a party's attitude toward a certain behavior in modern history.
So far, this hatred is fueling the passion of Democratic voters, but when the general election rolls around liberals better have some substantive policies to distinguish themselves from the president, other than just opposing him for the sake of venting their ill will toward him. And they want to lecture us about partisanship?
David Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated columnist.
posted by scott 7:04 AM