Attack on the home front

By Bruce Walker
web posted December 10, 2001

Liberals and Democrats have long held a secret and vicious
desire: they want misery to increase. As old socialists used to say
"The worse, the better." Conservatives, who desire to live their
own lives rather than to live vicariously through the suffering and
dependence of others, simply cannot easily understand this bitter
sentiment.

Today liberal Democrats get up every morning hoping to see
blood and agony in Asia along with fear and angst at home. War
and Depression have ever been the best friends of liberals, who
get misty eyed thinking about the regimentation of public life
during the Second World War and the failed, but popular, New
Deal era.

While conservatives have grappled with this for many decades,
the best response to date has been the cheery optimism of
Ronald Reagan. The sad sack countenance of Jimmy Carter and
pathetic seriousness of Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis
were so sharply in contrast to the twelve years of Republican
presidential confidence that not even our domestic Pravda,
Izvestia, and Tass could save Democrats from themselves.

Clinton learned from these lessons, and presented a happy-go-
lucky fellow from the Ozarks who cared for the little guy. His
willingness to do anything for power and fame, combined with a
president that the mainstream press could play slow pitch girls'
softball with glee allowed a couple as remote from real America
as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from pre-Revolutionary
France to glide through eight years of nothingness and present it
as activity and progress.

Conservatives now openly express concern that a slow economy
will cost Republicans control of Congress in November 2002. If
conservatives and Republicans follow the same game plan as
over the last fifty years, then that may happen. But there is a
much brighter picture, if the President is willing to be as bold and
direct as he has shown on in the war on terrorism.

We must understand that some very important dynamics have
changed in the last few years. Liberals must gnash their teeth
every time a new public opinion poll comes out. President Bush's
job approval rating has remained very high longer than any
president in modern history, but there are two more important
and less conspicuous stories from the polling data.

Personal approval for George W. Bush has been high or very
high since this question was originally routinely asked in May of
1998. The clear majority of Americans have shown in every poll
taken for the last three and a half years that they genuinely like
and admire George W. Bush, the man.

No one on either side is talking about this much, but it is a very
big story. President Bush may well be the most personally
popular president in American history. He is more popular, as a
person, than either FDR or Ronald Reagan. Teddy Roosevelt
and Dwight Eisenhower are the only two men who have been as
uniformly liked by the average American. These are also the only
two men who could, if they had chosen, have been routinely re-
elected to the Presidency without war or other national crisis.

The second hidden story of public opinion polls is that the
atmospheric job approval ratings of the President were preceded
by eight months of strong public approval for his Presidency. The
devious liberal notion that somehow President Bush "proved"
himself after September 11th was true only in their own narrow
minds. He had proved himself in the minds of most Americans
before the attack on our country.

"A mile wide, but an inch deep" is the wishful thinking of liberal
pundits when they talk about President Bush's popularity. In fact,
the combination of this exceptional son of a good president is so
sharply in contrast to the vain pomp and self-importance of
Clinton and his gang, that the President's support is both broad
and deep.

Think about the salient fact in liberal critiques of George W.
Bush: they always, always, always underestimate him. Today he
is not like Bill Clinton, basking in some unmerited warm because
of a lunatic's attack on the Murrah Building or perverse
sympathy for the public exposure of his perversion. President
Bush's popularity is akin to what Teddy Roosevelt or Dwight
Eisenhower would have had if they had been in office on
December 7, 1941: wide, intense, and permanent support.

The popularity of President Bush would not hold such
devastating promise for us if it was not joined by another
powerful emotion: public revulsion for the leftist pseudo-
intelligentsia and the regal overlords of the mainstream liberal
information corporations. Has the "news media" ever been held
in lower esteem than today? Perhaps not.

The explosion of conservative sources of news and analysis has
exposed with shocking clarity that the emperor not only has no
clothes, but that the emperor is flabby, old, and clumsy. Fox
News, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Michael Reagan, our
illustrious editor Steve Martinovich, and dozens of other tough,
hungry, and quick veterans of the Left's ideological jihads are
insuring that our neighbors and acquaintances get a good look
inside the perfumed, gaudy salons of these guardians of the
Ancien Regime.

Bernard Goldberg's new blockbuster about media bias, Dan
Rather's comical myopia of liberal Democrat Gary Condit,
Leftist media dithering about whether Bush is worse than bin
Ladin, and the slow drip of incompetence, arrogance, and
indifference of Clinton are putting these spoiled brats of the Left
on the defensive for the first time in their lives.

Now is the time for President Bush to strike. The good guys, as
we have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, are much stronger than
the bad guys pretend that they are. So it is in America today.
Even liberals do not really believe their lies anymore; they rather
cling to lies, because they are rooted in nothing else.

What should the President do? He should point out that he has
waited and that he has been patient. The nation and the world
have seen that the President gives every man a fair chance to do
what is right. He is rightly perceived as patient and reasonable.
Then the President should land a couple of haymakers.

First, President Bush should proclaim loud and often than liberals
and Democrats want America to slip into a recession or worse,
and that Tom Daschle and Hillary! dream of soup lines and
smiling.

The President should point out that Democrats have run things
way too long. The supercilious "reason" for Jim Jeffords leaving
the Republican Party was that the nation could not be entrusted
to the hands of one political party - like the four years of the
Carter Presidency or the first two years of the Clinton
Presidency? The President should say that giving his political
party two years of actually implementing changes is what he
needs and what he asks for from the nation. If this means
conservative Democrats switching parties, fine. If it means
Republican victories in November 2002, fine too.

President Bush should explain that he has tried bipartisanship,
and that it does not work with these Democrats. This sounds like
a gamble, but the same public opinion polls that show the
President very popular also show Republicans strongly favored
in generic House elections - something almost unprecedented in
the last thirty years.

Second, the President should add his voice to the growing
chorus of people disgusted by the anti-American radicalism of
the liberal news media and academia. Ask publicly why CBS
News did not mention Gary Condit for months and why none of
the big liberal media mentioned he was a Democrat. Ask why
the liberal media feels a need to "balance" the American
government with international gangsters and liars.

He should point out that these new "Malefactors of Great
Wealth" try to keep conservative and independent voices quiet
or even crushed. Ask Americans why Fox News is the hardest
news station to find, even though it is the most popular where it is
found. Ask why, when CBS, MSNBC, CNN, ABC,
Washington Post, New York Times, and other rich and powerful
corporations all sound just the same.

Point out a twenty or so egregious examples of anti-Americanism
in academia and then ask why Americans must hear this from the
President, instead of the guardian press, and why taxpayers are
funding those who hate them.

How should this be presented to the nation? In an early State of
the Union Address. The Constitution does not say when the
President gives this address, and there is every reason for giving
one now. The President should then present a very simple
economic stimulus plan, a very simple plan for ending media bias,
and a very simple plan for cleaning up the muck in academia.
And he should ask Americans to call their congressmen, their
senators, their television, radio, and cable systems, and demand
these actions be undertaken within one week.

Then, the President should point to the special problem of the
Senate. He must make clear that it is not an up or down vote he
fears, but constant and endless delays. President Bush can get
the House of Representatives to pass all he needs fairly quickly,
and he should say that if Senate Democrats dither to prevent
votes on presidential appointments, votes on essential legislation,
or similar matters, then he will exercise his constitutional power
to dismiss the Senate.
			
The Senate is only required to meet once a year, and President
Bush should make it quite clear than these layabouts will not be
allowed to meet again until after the November 2002 Elections.
No hearings. No resolutions. No backroom deals. The President
will do, if necessary, just what his predecessor did: issue lots and
lots of Executive Orders.

American military forces in Afghanistan have proven that the bad
guys are hollow shells and that the good guys are the real tough
guys in this world. Now is the time for the President to attack,
attack, and attack.

Bruce Walker (feb6@enterstageright.com) is a senior writer with
Enter Stage Right. He is also a frequent contributor to The
Pragmatist and The Common Conservative.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com