Liberals Question Tiger Woods' Nine Iron
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (04/08/05)
NEXT, they’ll tell us “Cats” wasn’t a hit.
Since George Bush assumed the presidency, liberals have lost on every major issue. They supported the Kyoto Protocol, but it remains pitifully unpopular. They opposed cutting taxes, but Republicans cut them anyway. They even opposed freeing Iraq—and we know how that’s gone. (I can’t quite remember: Are elections good for democracy, or bad?) Every time liberals speak, they lose. They couldn’t even persuade enough dead people to reelect Tom Daschle in South Dakota. There’s no sane reason to believe they will beat Bush on Social Security—save for the fact that the lemming press is demanding it.
Reporting that Bush outsmarts Democrats is like reporting that Tiger Woods plays golf well. It’s boring. That’s why the media were so noticeably smitten with Abu Ghraib. It was the one issue where Americans, under Bush, made a true, unadulterated mistake. Nothing else really works that way. They tried Enron, but, assuming Paul Krugman’s office doesn’t represent all of America, the lies surrounding its loud collapse failed. Americans are generally pretty sharp when it comes to sensing liberal fibbing.
The hip line now, then, is that Bush’s town-hall meetings about Social Security have been unsuccessful. “Republican lawmakers are beginning to doubt whether the president can succeed in establishing individual investment accounts under Social Security,” sniffed the New York Times. The Times cites Chuck Grassley, who believes Democrat leader Harry Reid, who maintains that Bush’s plan is “flawed.”
Rep. Jim Leach, Republican of Iowa, says that “opposition has hardened substantially,” even though no real shift has taken place at all. It’s one thing to cite CBS polls of the Average American, but it’s another to ask actual legislators how they will vote.
For the benefit of those who are so gleefully kvelling over their puerile predictions: this president doesn’t lose. If that sounds like undue arrogance, recall the presidential election of 2000, the midterms of 2002, and then Bush’s resounding reelection in ’04. Those weren’t good times for Democrats, as I recall.
Even Europeans have come to understand that fighting Bush is pointless. After all the anti-American, anti-Semitic jabbering about vicious neocon Paul Wolfowitz, he coasted rather bump-free to his new position at the World Bank. (All those shocked that France surrendered, please raise your hands.) Wolfie was certainly hated—until Bush put it up for a vote. Since then, the problem’s mysteriously dissipated. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, after all.
I only wish we’d thought of this method during the election. Every time Kerry had a harsh word for Rummy or Condi, Bush should have nominated them for various positions at international organizations. Then, when delicate Europeans rolled over and confirmed them, Bush could have gone on TV to rub it in. That would have really improved the debate over “allies.”
President Bush will be successful on Social Security mainly because he’s right. Contrary to liberals’ rosy projections, at some point the money supply is going to run out. And we’re not raising taxes or upping the retirement age, so we’ve got to fix the problem. There is, putting aside what Harry Reid says, a serious problem.
Bush isn’t embellishing the need for change, but suppose he was. Wouldn’t we still have to do something toward solvency? At last count, Democrats think Social Security’s going to be just dandy until approximately 3023—and even then, all we’ll have to do is make people work until their 92, and we’ll be good to go. That doesn’t sound like a solution.
At the moment, the person doing the most damage to Republican Social Security aspirations is one Bill Frist. Instead of whining, Frist should—and I know this is astute analysis—try speaking to the press. With Daschle, we got minute-to-minute updates live from his bathtub; nobody ever sees Frist—unless he’s telling an international audience that Bush’s plans might have to wait.
“The Architect,” Karl Rove, says that the strategy Bush is currently employing will work, and John Snow says that he anticipates “good legislation…that will lead to a signing ceremony with the president in the fall.'' Whom should we believe: Rove and Snow, men who actually work with the president, or screaming, scheming liberals who have opposed Bush at every turn?
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