Clear Choice
By Gary Aldrich (02/09/04)
There’s much chatter about how similar the Democrat and Republican parties have become, if determined only by the uncontrolled growth of the federal government. For one thing, Conservatives are up in arms about the Medicare drug bill, representing the largest domestic spending increase in modern times, and violating a basic tenet of the Conservative platform—preserving a limited government.
Of course, Liberals still complain that we’re not spending enough on Seniors – but no one expects them to praise George W. Bush for handing an entitlement out to one of their important voting blocks. Entitlements are the Democrats’ job!
So while Teddy Kennedy won’t send President Bush a dozen roses for co-opting one of the Democrats’ key agenda items, the jury is still out on whether the Bush plan will work to entice more senior voters into giving him a second term.
Then there’s the increase in the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. The Bush administration promises 18 million dollars of new money to promote real art – instead of the urine-soaked crucifixes that taxpayers have been forced to support for many years (Make a note to check and see if there’s any NEA money in that awful Super Bowl halftime show).
Here’s a question: As the chief executive in charge of the Executive Branch, why can’t a Conservative president order basic changes at the NEA to shift existing funds from objectionable programs to support those more closely resembling the wishes of the citizens who voted for George Bush? Isn’t the NEA Bush’s agency now?
In other words, why rubber stamp everything the jolly Clinton administration put in place by layering new programs on top of old ones, without assessing the existing programs to determine if they are wanted or even needed in the first place?
Some might ask, “Where is the Conservative agenda we voted for? Isn’t there one good example of a Conservative agenda item in one single federal agency?”
Fortunately this past weekend, two Democratic presidential contenders illustrated loud and clear the real difference between the two parties.
When asked to react to the horrible half-time show during Sunday night’s prime-time Super Bowl game, where Janet Jackson allowed Justin Timberlake to expose her breast to over 90 million viewers around the world, Candidate Dean could only muster a pathetic, “big deal.” He then made it obvious why he should never have his hands on the Oval Office levers of power when he reflected on his medical career and the obvious – that a doctor sees a lot of body parts during a career.
It was all about Howard, don’t you see? It wasn’t about this country’s reputation, or the sorry state of our culture. If you are Howard Dean, you’ve seen a lot of breasts, so it’s no big deal.
By logical extension, when Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky soiled the Oval Office carpeting with activity similar to what we watched performed by half-wits during the Super Bowl half-time, I guess that was also just about body parts. Makes one wonder what Howard Dean might do in our Oval Office. Is that the attitude voters want to see in a future White House?
But Senator Kerry articulated the most important difference between a Democrat and a second Bush term when he spoke to firefighters in Oklahoma at a campaign stop over the weekend. He made it clear that if elected president, he would adopt the prior Clinton administration policies related to terrorism, treating most terrorist acts as violations of law, suitable for investigation by the FBI.
Many national security experts are convinced that the law enforcement approach to worldwide fanatical terrorists failed dramatically, as evidenced by the most graphic carnage seen in our collective lifetimes – and is not something a person possessing common sense ever wants to see again. The attacks against this country on September 11, 2001 were a direct result of attempting to appease and contain terrorists, while trying to comply with the wishes of third-world bureaucrats at the United Nations.
I hope we’ve had enough of the failed Clinton concepts for protecting our homeland.
Bush should be reelected for that reason alone – and if he is not, I wonder if the Super Bowl half-time show is not a fair representation of what we have become as a people.
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