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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (29504)	10/15/2004 10:09:18 AM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Yeah red we all know if the shoe was on the other foot you'd be having one of your frequent childish tantrums... Say, doesn't that make you a hypocrite, or just a fool? LOL!

To: redfish who wrote (29504)	10/15/2004 10:55:36 AM
From: redfish	Respond to of 173976

It's good to be king' Posted on Friday, October 15 @ 10:01:39 EDT By Peter Lee George Bush looked like the King Wednesday night. Like Elvis. George Bush looked like crap. Blotchy skin, uncertain eyes, a blob of nursing home spittle on the corner of his freakishly fixed smile... So much like Elvis in his last years, pushed on stage by greedy retainers desperate to squeeze the last dollar out of the addled, unhappy, and humiliated man. Bush wants out. He looked up at Kerry like a gaffed bass reading confirmation of his own hopeless but mercifully brief future in the cold, clear eye of the fisherman hauling him into the boat. He looked like a man who had given up. On that basis, I rate Bush's performance in the third debate a half-Harken: not outright fiduciary misconduct, but fatally short of energy and imagination and guilty of insufficient due diligence on behalf of his anxious investors. His rote performance must have been particularly dismaying to the corporations and interest groups that have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the Bush presidency trying to prop up the fortunes of this willing but no longer interested or eager puppet. Maybe it's medication. Maybe it's disease. Maybe the insane rigors of a presidential campaign have taken their toll on a lazy man used to short days, long nights, and minimal mental effort. The reversal over these debates has been absolutely astounding. Kerry was the model of cool consistency. By the third debate Bush had, I think, unconsciously signaled his own abandonment of the Kerry flip-flopper strategy that Karl Rove had spent furious months and tens of millions of dollars trying to pin on Kerry. Instead, Bush anointed Kerry a rock solid "out of the mainstream" liberal. Now Bush is the flip-flopper, his credibility bleeding away in a million self-inflicted cuts. No one knows who Bush is anymore. It was as if three different defective dime store robots showed up, one for each debate: Baby Pullstring, Rockem Sockem, and Smiley the Sad Clown. But Bush's downfall may have been "lesbo-gate". I'll admit it. I didn't like it when Kerry brought Mary Cheney into his answer about "Is homosexuality a choice". I'm sure Mary wouldn't want the issue of her sexual orientation unctuously exploited on a national stage by her Dad's worst political enemy. But the key point is that Bush didn't call him on it. Bush should have said: "The Cheneys care deeply about the happiness of their children. They deal with their family issues with love, with dignity, and with prayer...and they do it privately. How dare you violate their privacy to try to score cheap political points. You are wrong, Senator Kerry, just plain wrong. And you should apologize." That could have been Bush's Reaganesque "I paid for this microphone" moment, showing his instinctive command of the issues that matter profoundly to him and connect him emotionally to Americans. Instead, it was up to Lynn Cheney to strap on a pair of nuts and excoriate Kerry at a post-debate rally. But it's too late. Bush missed his chance. He just stood there like a foolishly grinning, out of it putz. During the debate, I got the feeling that Kerry was the president, and Bush was some absurd, disoriented upstart hauled out of the audience to act like a foil. When Kerry brought in Mary Cheney it was cruel...and presidential. Cruel in the way that presidents often areóand have to beóin order to get what they want. As to the merits of the remark, Kerry was spot on. He assumed that the code behind Schieffer's question was, "If you are going to pander to your fundamentalist base by endorsing the view that homosexuality is a choice i.e. a sinful choice forbidden by the Bible, how do you reconcile that with the situation of the daughter of your Vice President. Is she choosing to defy God's explicit will?" Bush waffled ("I don't know"), no doubt confident his evangelical base would not call him on it. "Too bad Mary's going to hell" or "I'm praying that she'll recognize the error of her ways and go straight" would have torpedoed his chances with the still sizable non-evangelical, brainstem-endowed portion of the American electorate. By bringing in Mary Cheney, Kerry ruthlessly cut to the heart of the question and highlighted the contradictions/hypocrisy in Bush's position. As for Mary, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time...with the wrong defender. The right wing blogs immediately whipped themselves into a foaming frenzy trying to establish "Kerry mean to Mary" as a dominant debate theme (and draw focus away from the incredibly damaging "I never said I don't worry about OBL" gaffe). But I don't see it gaining a lot of traction. Mary Cheney is long out of the closet. Her sexual orientation is apparently an acknowledged element in her role as corporate outreach gladhander. Kerry unambiguously endorsed the idea that homosexuality is innate. The number of pro-Bush gays ready to slug it out with Kerry on these terms probably couldn't fill a phone booth. All that's left is the resentment of the right that an unpalatable truth about the moral and human complexity of the world was highlighted by Kerryóand they couldn't crush Kerry with a Bible because Mary Cheney would be underneath it too. The campaign will still be very close. Bush will be more relaxed now that he essentially self-sabotaged his candidacy by doffing the presidential mantle in the debates. Voters uncomfortable with Kerry's imperfectly suppressed Gore-esque tendency to crowd air out of a room with his overachieving command of the issues will find themselves once again drawn to the Shrub schlub. But in these uncertain times, Bush is now seen as adding to that uncertainty. Not what the anxious undecideds are looking for. Kerry now sets the standard for stability and consistency. He's the President-in-Waiting. The campaign is between President Kerry and a drifting regency anchored on the uncertain person of George W. Bush. Kerry has taken charge. He can enjoy the advantages of a shadow incumbency. Now he doesn't have to struggle so much to be liked. Now the extent to which he is feared and detested is a testimony to his latent and imminent power. It's good to be king. Copyright 2004 Peter Lee smirkingchimp.com