From Adam Clymer to the tin can lady, Democrats search for a campaign issue.

The 2000 Presidential Election: The Fire Before the Storm

What would a discussion of liberalism, morality in politics, race, religion, and lying with statistics be if we didn’t bring it all together with the one event that still leaves liberals foaming at the mouth — even six years later — whenever they speak of it?  The 2000 presidential election.

The Gore-Bush race wasn’t always a point of intense controversy between myself and Harry. Things started off cordially enough as Harry and I began to write back and forth regarding the upcoming November elections.  I’d picked my man months ago.  George W. Bush was my governor.  I knew how he acted, and what he was like as a politician and a human being.  Not that we hung out in Austin, mind you, but I (like my fellow Texans) was the object of his policy-making and leadership efforts.  When yellow dog Democrats speak kindly of a Republican politician, you’ve either got a sell-out trying to incur favor with the opposite party, or a pretty remarkable guy who’s the object of the praise.  George Bush was no sycophantic sell-out trying to get Democrats to praise him, so I took it as a good sign that others across party lines saw him as I did — the right man to lead the nation as we moved into the 21st century.

Harry supported Gore, though he wasn’t his first choice as the Democrat’s standard-bearer.  But Gore got the nod, and Harry fell in line behind him.  I really can’t blame him for going with the default candidate.  I supported Dole in 1996, not because I liked him particularly, but because I wanted anybody but Clinton.  Had we put up Ronald McDonald against Clinton in 1996, I would have been on the Happy Meal bandwagon — presuming that he met the minimum criteria of sharing my same value system. 

Dole was a conservative, a war hero, and a decent human being, but he was also a political dinosaur who would have a difficult time running against Clinton in the area where the American media told us it counted most: charisma and personal charm.  Pat Buchanan was too far to the right for my tastes, though I loved him in his role as a political commentator.  I would have supported Colin Powell too, from what I knew about his politics then.  He’s a lot more socially liberal than I like, but got high marks from me in other key areas.  In other words, he’s no Condi Rice (for whom I’d crawl over broken glass to vote into office), but he would have been a much better candidate than Dole.

To the best of my understanding, Harry didn’t seem to struggle as much with his choice in 2000.  I had a history of exercising political independence over the years. I couldn’t vote for either Carter or Ford in 1976. Carter was an empty suit in my opinion, and Ford was an empty, empty suit.  I cast a protest vote for Eugene McCarthy of all people because he got screwed by the Carter crowd who kept him off a key primary state ballot, and thus cost him the nomination, much like Al Gore sucker punched Bill Bradley in the 2000 Democratic primaries. (Note to the media: when the Democrats eat their young, it’s okay.  When Bush goes toe to toe with McCain, it’s an abomination.  Did I get it right?)  
 
I also had trouble seeing a former movie actor as president in 1980.  But there was no way I was going to vote for Carter.  If I thought he was incompetent in 1976, I knew he was four year later after double-digit malaise-induced inflation, and 444 days of Americans held hostage in Iran.  But this guy Reagan was a big question mark in my mind.  Could he really govern the country, or were we in for another rocky four years with a bumbler in command?  So I voted for John Anderson as another protest.  However, by the 1984 elections all doubts about Ronaldus Magnus had been firmly removed from my mind, and I count him now as one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had.

As for Harry, I think he told me that he split his vote too somewhere along the line, but it was one of those “trust me”-type moments where you could never really be sure that you actually understood what you thought you might have heard.   All I knew is that by the time the 90s rolled around, Harry was a committed Clintonista who stood by his man no matter what he did to Elian Gonzalez or the State of Israel, and that same loyalty was being transferred to Gore.  By June of 2000 we had both marked our territory, and the first salvos were fired in this debate among friends.  As usual, though, Harry led with the Democratic talking points about governor Bush instead of thinking the issue through himself.

Harry: By the way, your buddy George W. is waffling on the death penalty lately in Texas [over the impending execution of Ricky McGinn.]  This may be his Elian Gonzalez Achilles heel as the right wing of the Republican Party may be alienated by his sudden show of compassion as he finally realizes that the first commandment is “Thou shall not kill.”  He will not gain any support from the center as they will not trust him. Looks like he is in a lose-lose situation on this one.  What do you think?

It was a couple of years later that I heard the radio commentator Dennis Prager (who, like Harry, is Jewish, and who, like Harry, is fluent in Hebrew), speak about the proper translation of that commandment as Thou Shall Not “Murder.”  I wish I had have known it then, because I would have thrown that inconvenient little factoid into my response to Harry.  As it was, though, I had plenty of ammunition to respond to the silly, superficial analysis he presented. 

The one thing liberals never seem to understand is that people on the Right aren’t a bunch of knuckle-dragging racists, sexists, homophobe, single-issue morons who read a newspaper headline and think they’ve got the whole story.  I’m not complaining about this mischaracterization, mind you.  As long as the Left actually believes their own propaganda, they’ll keep making the same strategic mistakes when running for office.  Calling Bush an idiot doesn’t make him one; but if you really believe he’s stupid because your own vanity and insecurities won’t let you take him seriously, he’ll keep cleaning your clock year after year, and you’ll never know what hit you.

Phil: Where do you get this stuff?  Do you really think that Bush will lose my support just because he says, “I don’t want to kill an innocent man, so sure, even though the scumbag [Ricky McGinn] waited until the last second to raise the issue, I’ll give him 30 days to take a DNA test.”  Now consider the next 30 days:

Scenario 1.  The DNA proves he’s innocent.  Bush says, “like I said, I’ll go the extra mile before I execute a man.  My record is still secure.  No innocent people have been executed in Texas.”  GW gives the man a reprieve and looks like a righteous guy.  Algore loses his political issue.

Scenario 2.  The DNA test results prove the guy’s guilty.  Barry Sheck now argues that the DNA in question was magically transformed into his client’s DNA through police mishandling. The debate returns again to what it really is — no death penalty under any circumstances.  GW allows the execution to go forward, and no opinions are changed either way.  Algore loses his political issue.

Crap like this would have worked for Algore in previous years, but Bush (contrary to your waffling analysis) is winning precisely because he has real values and sticks to them.  The Democrats want to turn death penalty cases like this into a Bush bloodlust.  GW says simply that the law was followed, the man was convicted and sentenced, and the crime will be punished appropriately — unless of course a DNA test proves him innocent, so I’ll go the extra mile to make sure before we strap him in.

The Right loves this kind of stuff!  Contrast this view with Rosie O’Donnell and gun control.  She comes out against guns for everyone, unless it’s for the bodyguard watching over her kids.  That’s just his “personal choice” to carry a weapon.  Like others on the Left she has no core values.  Only expediency guides her actions, and the belief — like Clinton — that laws are meant to be obeyed by everyone else, but celebrities and special people have superior rights.  Remember Carl Rowan on gun control?  It’s the same thing.

To no one’s surprise, the DNA test confirmed that Ricky McGinn was indeed guilty of rape and murder.  And to no one’s surprise, McGinn’s defense team didn’t challenge the results, but raised questions about how the samples were gathered and processed by the police.  In a tactic that worked well for O.J. Simpson but has seen little success since that time, no one believed the charge that the police planted the evidence to convict McGinn.  Ricky McGinn was put to death in August 2000. 

Republican voters were not alienated by Governor Bush’s “sudden show of compassion,” and did not consider his principled approach to the issue to be a sign of “waffling.”  In his own John Kerry moment, Al Gore continued to support the death penalty while opposing it (or was it opposing the death penalty while supporting it?  I can never remember.).  And just to balance things out, Republicans were tarred and feathered by the mainstream press for their closet anti-Semitism while the overt, anti-Semitic remarks of Democratic Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Cynthia McKinney were excused or ignored all together.

Which brought us to early September and a second attempt to smear Bush as a mean-spirited, out of control cowboy too coarse, or too unsophisticated to be president.  The episode introduced another word into the lexicon of American politics.  From this point forward, one of the main body orifices common to both men and women will forever be known as a “Clymer.”  As reported on September 4, 2000 by Salon.com,

At a Labor Day event in Naperville, Ill., Monday morning, apparently oblivious of the microphone just inches from his mouth, Gov. George W. Bush made a crude offhand remark about a reporter that those in the campaign of his rival, Vice President Al Gore, hope will take some of the shine off Bush's warm and sunny veneer.

Waving and smiling to the crowds, Bush and his running mate, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, seemed to be enjoying the generous reception offered by the Republican enclave in the Chicago suburbs.

Then Bush spotted New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, who has been with the paper since 1977, serving as national political correspondent during the 1980 presidential race, as polling editor from 1983 to 1990 and as political editor during the successful presidential campaign of Bush's father in 1988.

"There's Adam Clymer — major league a**hole — from the New York Times," Bush said.

"Yeah, big time," returned Cheney.

Harry sent me an email asking me, because of this incident:

. . . is this the man we want with his fingers on the nuclear switch?  This faux pas in Naperville has real implications for the Bush campaign.  Bush has fought the perception, whether rightfully or wrongly, that he simply lacks the credentials to effectively run this government.

Now I know 9/11 was still a year away, but I’m still assuming this was some kind of universal statement that transcends a certain moment in history.  If calling Clymer a Clymer in September 2000 is direct evidence of Bush’s “lack [of] credentials to effectively run this government,” then I wonder what Gore would have said to Osama on September 11, 2001, after 3,000 people were killed in a terrorist attack?  Would calling Osama a Clymer have given my friend Harry pause to re-think his vote that past November?  Would the incautious language be a sign that Gore was about to plunge us into nuclear war?  

Somehow, I don’t think Harry would have come to the same conclusion about Gore as he did about Bush.  But this is all hypothetical about Gore anyway.  More realistically, after President Gore finished conducting an exit poll of the World Trade Center survivors to determine whether they wanted to see “conciliatory Al” or “upset Al” address the nation, instead of telling that sonofabitch Osama he was gonna get him “dead or alive,” President Gore would have convened a grand jury to look into the matter.  And as they reviewed the evidence and debated whether to indict Bin Laden, Gore would then ask the United Nations to sponsor a conference on why people hate the United States, so we could learn what do to improve our international image.

But I digress.  My actual response to this email, after I stopped laughing, was to relate a comment from my largely apolitical wife who stumbled across the story while flipping channels on the TV set.

Phil: Regarding GW’s “Clymer” comment, my wife’s first question upon hearing it was: “Is he?” 

So much for the national outrage. The comment won’t hurt Bush unless he apologizes for it, which he hasn’t.  All he said is that he regrets that a private comment was made public. 

Bush said it, didn’t deny it, believed it was true then, and believes it is true now, so he won’t apologize.  In short, Bush actually believes things and doesn’t back away from these positions.

Contrast this with Algore’s “I’ll debate you on Tim Russert’s and Larry King’s show — ohmygod, you accepted!  What I really meant to say is that I’ll debate you any time and any place after you do the following seven things first exactly the way I want them, including starting the debate in Liberal-land at the Kennedy library.”  Point goes to Bush.

As for your charge that Bush must accept the Presidential Commission’s recommendations or be tarred with “running away” from the debates, may I remind you that Bill Clinton accepted only one Pres-Com debate in 1996, but nobody made that charge against him.

The next part of my reply dealt in more detail with the ludicrous notion that insulting a liberal journalist by using a profanity somehow meant we were several steps closer to nuclear war if George Bush got elected.  Applying that criterion to my own life, we would have launched on the Soviet Union shortly after I began to talk.  I’m sure, down deep, that Harry knows this is all a bunch of liberal clap-trap disguised as objective analysis, but I’d sure like to see some evidence of that at some moment from someone on the Left. 

Harry’s an intelligent guy, and given any other circumstance he’s a level-headed, straight-shooting fellow.  But put him in the political arena and he’s usually the first one in line to drink the Kool-aid.  So it was with no expectation that I’d actually change his mind, I went through the emotional catharsis of responding to the stupidity with a little history lesson of my own.

Phil: By the way, I loved your analysis that calling an a**hole an a**hole will lead to nuclear war.  Do you remember Clinton’s open-mike tirade against Jesse Jackson in 1992?  Once he became president no nuclear missiles were launched against any of our enemies, but he did lob a few cruise missiles at Saddam every time Monica Lewinsky made the news.  And I thought liberals loved John McCain with his profanity-laced tirades against Bush and conservatives, because it showed how “real” and genuine he was?

Once again, this is the problem with the Lib-Dems.  They have no sense of continuity in their positions, because they have no core beliefs that require consistency.  Thus, they can come up with scenarios like calling an a**hole an a**hole will lead to nuclear war, because they don’t need to compare what they’re saying at the present to their own history/actions.

Remember in 1992 and 1996 when character didn’t count, because Bill Clinton was the candidate?  Now it does because Lieberman is on the ticket — although an objective observer will find real problems with positions adopted by the “new Joe” compared to the positions advocated by the “old Joe.”  The same thing with Bush invoking Jesus’ name and being condemned by the Democrats, while Lieberman wears his religion on his sleeve, and that’s a great thing.  The American people see right through this stuff.

I was also very concerned about Gore’s penchant for just making up facts to prove his points.  It’s bad enough to claim that he invented the Internet, but that type of self-important drivel can be easily checked and refuted.  The more insidious form of this occurred when Gore constantly invoked stories of personal tragedy and mean-spirited Republican policies to make a point.  Two, among the legion of others, come to mind as I reviewed my email exchanges with Harry:

Phil: Remember the “tin can lady” Gore trotted out last week and spoke about in his speech?  [This was an allegedly poverty-stricken elderly women who had to go around town collecting discarded trash to pay for her food and medication -- the living embodiment of the proverbial senior citizen reduced to eating dog food from a can because evil Republicans cut off her social security payments so they could give Enron and Halliburton a tax break].  She was revealed to be a woman who has all of her meds paid for by her pension. She has consistently refused to take money from her son, and picks up tin cans as a “hobby.”  She’s obviously a bit deranged, and we should feel sorry for her.  Instead, Gore showcases her as a typical example of how the elderly in America live, and wants to revamp our entire health care system to accommodate this fictitious problem.

Another example.  Gore says Florida schools (the home state of another Republican governor also named Bush) are so bad that a student had to stand in the hallway because there was no room for her in the classroom.  Later, we find out that this horrible, deprived schoolroom was jammed with $100,000 in newly arrived lab equipment, and that the student standing was a first-day-of-school mix-up that was corrected the next day.  When faced with this fact, Gore says that the point is still valid.  Florida schools are in bad shape under a Republican administration (by a guy who happens to have the same last name as George because they share a common set of parents, so you can draw your own conclusions). But he produces no other evidence of any school with a specific problem. 

If Gore’s point was valid, he’d simply pull out one of 99 other examples he has to make his case.  But he has no other examples, just unsubstantiated allegations.  This is not a “minor detail.” it’s a lie.  What’s worse?  Mangling syntax, or mangling the truth?

Harry’s conclusion, nevertheless, was that Bush’s penchant for malapropisms, his boorish behavior with regard to a respected New York Times reporter, and his refusal to accept without modification the recommendations of the presidential commission on debates, meant that the 2000 election was shaping up as a “cake-walk” for Gore and he Democrats.  This opinion of Harry’s was only reinforced by Bush’s supposedly dreadful performance in the first presidential debate, where according to the Liberal view of the world, he viciously attacked Gore on illegal campaign contributions, and “mentioned the issue of infidelity and that Gore condoned it.”

Harry: Bush has a mean streak in him the American people saw very clearly.  He could not have done any better for Gore than to show what his true colors are.  George is a complete buffoon and all I can say is we are in trouble if he wins.

It’s one thing to get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and see Brad Pitt staring back instead of an overweight, balding, middle-aged man like I am.  If imagining yourself as Adonis helps to get you through the day, there’s no real harm to it.  But when you begin to see that reflection as a real image, and start coming on to twenty-year-old supermodels or Playboy playmate look-alikes, you’re setting yourself up for a major disappointment unless that wad in your back pocket is the first installment of the $20 million mega-lottery prize you won the night before.  Which is a long way of saying, think whatever you want to about yourself or others, but act in accordance with the reality of a situation, or you’re setting yourself up for a big disappointment.

There’s no better example of this than the commentary coming from the talking heads on ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN following each of the three 2000 presidential debates. Their instant analysis went something like this:  “Gore clearly won the first debate. Absolutely no doubt about it.” 

A few days pass, and opinion polls and conventional wisdom give Bush the nod. The original comments are revised slightly.  “Well, Gore may not have had his finest moment in the first debate, but the new, improved Al clearly outshined Bush in the second debate.” 

Again time passes, and the analysis fails to take hold among the great unwashed that constitutes the American electorate.  So we go to version 1.3: “Well, yes Bush did slightly better than the Vice President in the first two debates, who was still trying to find his ‘voice,’ but the new, improved, improved Al Gore just clobbered the governor from Texas, which incidentally ranks last in nearly every meaningful category by which we measure our lives.”

Of course this wishful thinking didn’t hold either, but it did serve its purpose to keep the Harrys of the world stoked.  So who can blame him for sending me a breathless email telling me that G.W. Bush was fast going down in flames. 

My contention back to Harry was that Gore, not Bush, came off as the “mean” guy, and therefore clearly lost all three debates.  Now to be honest, whether Gore or Bush were “mean” or not didn’t bother me on a fundamental level, because I personally am not looking for kindly old Uncle Oscar to lead the nation.  I’d rather have a foul mouthed streetfighter protecting my interests than the proverbial “nice guy” who everyone walks over. 

It was part of the reason I couldn’t support Gerald Ford for President in 1976.  What sent me over the edge in that race was a campaign brochure touting the reasons why Ford deserved election in his own right after succeeding to the presidency following Richard Nixon’s resignation.  In an effort to humanize him, Ford’s campaign strategists devoted an entire back panel of the brochure to a story about “Ford the Man.”  It related how shortly after becoming president, his pet dog took a dump on the White House carpet.  As stewards rushed into the room to remove the offending turd, Ford waved them away.  “No man should have to clean up another man’s dog’s mess,” he proclaimed earnestly, then proceeded to get on his hands and knees and take care of the problem himself. 

And this was a reason why I should vote for him?  We’re in the middle of a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, and tensions are running high.  Ford and the Soviet Premiere are on the phone in a last minute attempt to avoid the total annihilation of the human race when Spot lifts his leg.  Ford immediately puts Brezhnev on hold to grab a handful of extra-absorbent paper towels and pat-dry the doggy pee so it won’t stain the rug.  If he has to worry about something, I’d rather have a president focused on carpet bombing enemy troops, than cleaning the carpet in the Oval Office.

So forcefully advocating one’s positions, and pressing one’s points (delicately or not) in the face of their opponent’s hypocrisy, doesn’t bother me in the least.  In fact, I look upon this as a net-plus in my cahones-calculation to determine whether my candidate is a leader or a pushover.  But to a liberal more concerned with form over substance, these things do matter.  Heaven forbid that France shouldn’t like us if we lock heads over policy, or that some reporter for the New York Times is concerned about the way our President’s upper lip curls into a sneer from time to time.  How embarrassing would it be to travel to Europe or walk through the halls of the United Nations and have foreigners think we’re a nation of uncouth, testosterone-driven cowboys?   Better to sign the Kyoto Treaty and make sure the world keeps good thoughts about us, than tell the morons who came up with this idiotic idea just where they can take their ludicrous proposal and stick it.

Still, if the focus today was whose guy is meaner (and therefore less worthy of being president), I was prepared to argue the convoluted logic just to get another rise out of Harry.

Phil: Gore clearly came off looking worse than Bush.  This is America in the year 2000.  “Mean spirited” means interrupting your opponent, raising your voice, and invading other people’s “space” (ala Lazio and Hillary).  The fact that the charges are true or false, or actually mean anything of substance if they are true, is irrelevant. 

Gore violated all these tenets of supposedly acceptable behavior.  He raised his voice, and had a mean look on his face.  If he was Lazio and Bush was Hillary, Bush would have cried — and then it would have been all over for Gore.  You’ll notice that the post-debate, undecided idiot focus groups really picked up on this.  Whatever debating points Gore allegedly scored were washed away by his demeanor.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.

As to your comment about Bush’s uncalled for remarks about Gore’s hypocrisy and personal integrity, the charges he hurled against him had, as Mark Twain once said, “the added advantage of being true.”  Even Algore characterized his own actions as “scandal” in a rare moment of lucidity.  For those of us who aren’t particularly upset that the next leader of the free world might, in fact, call a crook a crook, Bush scored high points for not backing away from the invitation to take Gore to task for his actions.

Bush played Gore’s own game brilliantly.  While Gore sighed, mugged for the camera, shouted down the moderator, and interrupted Bush, Bush simply stayed on point.  The Bush base is jazzed.  The Gore base is still trying to explain why he’s really not a liar, and independents still don’t have a clue what planet they’re living on.  They won’t vote in great numbers anyway.  Only the committed go to the polls.  In this case, Bush wins.

In an October 12, 2000 email I entitled, “What will Algore do to earn a living after November 7?”, I wrote Harry and several others about the appalling manner the supposedly unbiased national press was treating the debates in general, and Algore’s character flaws in particular.

Phil: I watched the NBC Today show this morning.  Their snap poll regarding who won the debate last night shows Bush 40, Gore 37. The talking heads are saying “yeah, but the last snap poll was wrong [because Gore obviously won that debate, and every other encounter he’s had with Bush through the simple fact of showing up].  This poll may be wrong too.”

I don’t think so. After the debate Tom Brokaw interviewed a very uptight, still tentative Gore, who is trying to make Bush out to be a liar because only two of the three guys in Jasper got the death penalty for killing a black man.  It won’t work.  That, to use Gore’s own words, is really just a “detail.”  The other guy pleaded guilty and got life.

When I started to include that last passage in this chapter, it wasn’t my intention to stop here and make another 2007 side-comment.  But as I was reviewing it again, I was struck by the parallel between this line of attack and the “Bush lied” mantra about WMDs in Iraq.  In regard to the Jasper Texas case, where James Byrd was dragged behind a pick-up truck by three inbred, white-supremacist thugs who collectively make the best case for post-natal abortions I’ve ever come across, their trial and sentence has absolutely nothing to do with Bush — but he was blamed for “lying” about it anyway. 

Putting aside the stupidity for the moment of blaming the governor of the state for not imposing the death sentence on criminal defendants before, during, or after a trial where he plays no direct role in the judicial process, and leaving aside the issue that Algore was for the death penalty that day, but against it on other occasions when the wrong color people were supposed to be executed, I believe I may have pinpointed the precise moment in time where Liberal Democratic thought “evolved” into a higher plane of thinking.

“What time is it George?”
“Two o’clock.”
“It’s two-oh-one!”  Ha!  You’re a liar!”

Now for those who think I’m been too simplistic in equating a “mistake” with a “lie,” let me remind you that even the French thought there was WMD in Iraq.  The only question in their mind, and the minds of Russia, Germany, and other countries opposed to imminent military action, was the best way to handle Iraq’s repeated violations of Security Council mandates regarding WMD production.  (Actually, I’m being generous here, because the actual motives of France, Russia and Germany were to hide the fact that they were dealing with Iraq in violation of these same Security Council resolutions, but as Algore would say, that’s just a “detail.”)

So Bush leads a coalition of like-minded countries to enforce the Security Council’s resolutions, promote the regime change Bill Clinton proposed and the Democrats rallied behind in 1998, and finish the job his daddy failed to do in 1991 that caused so many Democrats sleepless nights as evidenced by their incessant criticism of G.H.W. Bush for abandoning the 1991 fight before it was finished.  Thanks to the Democrats' insistence that we re-debate and re-authorize the President’s authority to do this, and the Axis-of-Weasels’ delaying tactics aimed at forestalling U.S. action, by the time our troops entered Baghdad, there was no WMD to be found.

Sure, we came across some depleted uranium shells, a few nerve gas bombs, dug up some nuclear weapon blueprints in an Iraqi scientist’s back yard, and found other traces of an active program, but we didn’t come across a fully functional nuclear device, so none of this mattered.  And sure we watched convoys of planes, trains and automobiles leaving Iraq for Syria in the months and weeks before the war, but since we lacked the X-ray vision to see inside them, we can only conclude that it was all normal, commercial traffic, and not the movement of forbidden weapons or weapon components out of Iraq.

All of which is to say, the only rational explanation a liberal can conclude from all of this is that — Bush lied!  I thought the 2000 presidential debates were an attempt to give the American people some idea about who or what their candidates were, so they could make an informed judgment about which man was better suited for the office in the upcoming election.  It turns out that we may remember them most as a focus group for the next Democratic charge against their political opponents, one eagerly picked up by the Harrys of the world who can’t admit they lost the battle in the arena of ideas.  Democrats, and liberals, naturally belong in the seat of power.  Therefore, whatever interferes with this natural process must be the result of fraud or deceit.  And an administration brought to power by “stealing” an election is just a short step away from “lying” about something like Weapons of Mass Destruction, so it all fits. 

The only question left to ask after suffering through this line of reasoning, is “what color is the sky in your world?”  Or put less delicately, “just how stupid do you think the American people are?”  Quite stupid, unfortunately, based on the pronouncements of people like Andy Rooney, and the sophomoric, personally insulting way these same Liberals and Democrats expect us to believe that George Bush is the latest incarnation of Adolph Hitler.   Fortunately, though there is much to criticize the Bush Administration for — particularly regarding its horrible immigration and border security efforts — calling somebody a liar because you disagree with their policy choices, and refusing to offer alternative solutions to the problems you identify, has not proven overly effective in winning elections, as both 2002 and 2004 aptly demonstrated.

And when the Democrats did win in 2006, it was by running candidates to the Right of their Republican opponents, not to the Left.

Look for the next chapter coming soon — “Predictions, Pundits and Political Pabulum: Election Day Draws Closer.”