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http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/15/95530.shtml


Election Issues Didn't Matter; It Was a Referendum on Bush
Joan Swirsky
Monday, Nov. 15, 2004
During the heat of the presidential campaign, I asked an activist Democrat in my community how he could support John Kerry when he knew that the senator had traitorously betrayed his fellow Swift Boat colleagues in Vietnam after he returned from the war. He looked at me with a classic deer-in-the-headlights glaze.

Then I asked him how, as a Jew, he could support Kerry when he knew that the senator embraced the most anti-Semitic organization on earth, the United Nations. Again, that glazed look.
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Then I asked him how, as an immensely wealthy businessman, he could disagree that the president’s tax cuts had redeemed the recession he inherited from his predecessor and still vote for Kerry, who would certainly raise taxes. More glaze.
Then I asked him how he could vote against an incumbent who had responded so effectively against the attack on our nation on 9/11, when his predecessor had ignored over four such attacks and done nothing about them, and when Kerry held a dozen opinions about the conflict and would certainly flip-flop when it came to any action. His glaze turned into that comatose look that everyone dreads.

“You don’t understand,” he finally rallied. “The election is a referendum on George W. Bush.”

In other words, the issues didn’t matter. The election, he felt quite confident, would be the electorate’s way to judge President Bush as harshly as he had, to redeem his own and his fellow Democrats’ still-seething rage since their candidate, Al Gore, lost the election of 2000 and, in so doing, dissolved the aphrodisiac-like power that Democrats seem to lust for more than anything else.

Interestingly, when radio talk show host Sean Hannity interviewed Terry McAuliffe near the eve of the election, asking him similar questions, the Democratic National Committee chairman – as unable to answer as my interviewee – echoed the same sentiment. “This is a referendum on George W. Bush,” the now-discredited Clintonista intoned.

‘Bush Lied – Men Died!’

The president’s critics never tired of screeching this untruth. They wanted Americans to believe that the president lied about going to war against Iraq because one of his reasons was that the terrorist Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction – yet no WMD have been found.

But it is clear today that the American public didn’t buy this canard. I certainly didn’t, not after I heard and read that virtually every intelligence agency in the world said the same thing and that informed “experts” like John Kerry – who for years sat on Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees – affirmed over and over again that, yes, Saddam was a grave threat to our nation specifically because he had WMD and had used them on his own people.

Did he think we’d forget what he said? Did he believe that with enough media spin we’d develop amnesia? Did he really imagine that Americans were too stupid to figure out that while France and Germany and Russia blocked our efforts in the U.N. for 14 months (because, we know now, of their own complicity in the corrupt, multibillion-dollar U.N. Iraqi Oil-for-Food program) Iraq had ample time to dispose of its WMD?

The Democrats played the “Bush lied!” theme until the last hours of the campaign. But contrary to their “internal poll” results and the ubiquitous echo effect of a left-wing partisan media, the American public knew better.

‘No Blood for Oil!’

The president’s adversaries bleated this chant unendingly, accusing the “Bush dynasty” and GWB in particular of seeking and holding office solely to reap the benefits of their so-called cozy relationship with the oil-rich Saudis.

But the American public has eyes and ears and witnessed a president who went to war against terrorist nations “and those who harbored and supported them” in spite of the fact that the U.S. depends on oil from many of them. While his critics predicted – and again the left-wing media echoed – that oil prices would come down in the summer to support the president’s re-election bid, the exact opposite happened.

‘Bush Is Hitler’

The president’s fascist and socialist rivals spewed this pornography endlessly – including MoveOn.org, the George Soros-funded 527 group that knew no shame and seemed to know no history.

But the American public remembered Hitler, his bloodthirsty hunger for power, and the vast destruction he wreaked on both his country and the millions of innocent people who were led to their slaughter because they impeded his vision of a “master race.” They not only didn’t buy the ugly 517 ad, they also reviled and resented it and their sentiments showed up in their votes.

‘Bush Is a Moron!’

The president’s opponents clamored this catchphrase ceaselessly.

But the American public knew that a Yale- and Harvard-educated chief executive and commander in chief, a man who flew high-risk F-102 planes for over five years for the Texas Air National Guard, was an oil and gas business executive, owned a Major League Baseball team, was twice elected governor of Texas by historically high margins, was elected to the highest office on earth, and chose a Cabinet of immensely credentialed, educated and seasoned people, was more than a match for his critics.

Why? Because as journalist Cindy Osborne has documented, those opponents included foreign-policy experts such as high school dropout Cher; high school graduates Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Madonna, Sean Penn, Ed Asner, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston and Mike Farrell, and college dropouts Martin Sheen, Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo and Larry Hagman.

Osborne says that the “real morons – from Whoopi to the Susans (Estrich and Sarandon) to P. Diddy ‘vote or die’ Combs to Bruce Springsteen to Dan Blather – actually helped [Bush] get reelected. Love, pride and admiration won over hate and filth and degradation.”

Bush Is a ‘Jesus Freak’

While the left was busy excoriating the president, the president was busy being himself: a man of his word who lives a good and moral life by the precepts of the New Testament, which includes respect for the sanctity of human life.

Americans overwhelmingly support that belief, as they do the sacredness of marriage, as they do the powerful image of President Bush, who – in the face of blistering assaults, defamation of his character and outright slander – always turned the other cheek, charitably attributing his opponents’ behavior to “just politics.”

Over the last four years, as Americans witnessed the dismantling of the Ten Commandments in public institutions and children sanctioned for saying “under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, they took notice.

They heard about (but weren’t allowed to see) Whoopi Goldberg’s obscene parody of the president’s name at Radio City Music Hall. They saw the obscene display of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” on TV. They heard rap “artists” wish the president dead. They read Kerry’s interview with Rolling Stone magazine in which he felt the need to show what a regular guy he was by spouting filth.

They listened, clearly with horror, to the splenetic, vein-bulging ravings of Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Gov. Howard Dean, TV pundit Larry O’Donnell … the list goes on.

They saw anchors like Chris Matthews act crudely and rudely and with a shocking lack of respect toward Vietnam Swift Boat veterans.

They heard a steady stream of anti-American cant from Tinseltown. And they witnessed the left-wing media – both print and electronic – abandon any semblance of objectivity, even using forged documents to make their case against the president.

All this while at the same time they saw a president who never lost his bearings, who invoked the healing and energizing power of prayer, who spoke with resolve and conviction about his mission “to keep America safe,” who evinced eternal optimism about our country, and who demonstrated time after time that, indeed, values and character count!

Bush & Baseball

Of course, the ultimate referendum always comes from the electorate. To use a baseball analogy that my son Seth (www.seth.com) suggested, “W has been up to bat in world affairs and hit long home runs while the European and American Left tried to convince Americans that he whiffed at the plate.

While Russia was in Afghanistan for 10 years and failed, Bush was there for only three and liberated 25 million people, ousting the Taliban and the hierarchy of al Qaeda – and 10 million people just voted! That's at least comparable to a 3-bagger!”

”In Iraq,” he continued, “though WMDs have yet to be found, Americans can now be sure that they can't threaten us. Saddam Hussein is history. We’ve just taken Fallujah and after we take Ramadi and Mosul, there will be historic democratic elections in early 2005.

"All this in less than two years – mission accomplished! When you think that it took seven years post-WWII for both Germany and Japan to be reconstructed, the president’s accomplishments in liberating two of the most depressed and oppressed countries in the history of civilization is staggering. A resounding double play!”

Americans, Seth said, saw the Domino Effect clearly. “Libya’s Qaddafi didn't hand over to the U.S. 40,000 pounds of chemical agents because he liked George W. Bush. He did it because he saw what happened to Saddam. This is what the voters voted for.”

“All in all,” he added, “President Bush – in the battles he has waged – is batting around .400. Superior baseball players make it to the Hall of Fame if they bat .300. I think that by the end Bush’s second term – with the Middle East mostly democratic, the North Koreans de-fanged, the tax code and Social Security reformed, and the economy booming – President Bush will be considered among the greatest presidents of all time, surpassing Reagan and equaling Lincoln in stature.”

Bush’s Unpublicized Triumphs

What the Left was too blind to see and too enraged to appreciate were Bush’s stunning accomplishments in only four years. While his opponent John Kerry took a full year off from his senatorial responsibilities to run for the presidency, the president didn’t take off a second.

Against enormous opposition, he managed to get passed the No Child Left Behind act that holds schools and their teachers accountable for the progress of their students.

He made a historic grant of $15 billion to AIDS-ravaged Africa. He enacted the Patriot Act that has already gone a long way to protect U.S. citizens against future terrorist attacks.

He attended international conferences, visited and helped storm-ravaged disaster areas, met with world leaders about the most urgent issues of the day and generally conducted the highest office in the world without missing a beat.

And he also – amazingly – developed a presidential campaign that offered Americans ideas that were bold and unprecedented and hopeful – such as tort reform, innovative Social Security investments for younger people, health insurance pooling for small businesses, and also tax code simplification, among many other potential benefits to our country.

The Referendum

The day after the election, on November 3, a number of things were abundantly clear, including the pronouncements of those who, like Terry McAuliffe, had said, “The election is a referendum on George W. Bush.” Indeed! President Bush received more votes – nearly 60 million – than any presidential candidate in American history. He won 31 of 50 states.

He helped Republicans increase their majorities in the House and the Senate, winning both houses of Congress. He even won more counties in New York and California than Kerry did.

In addition, the electorate voted resoundingly to defeat Kerry’s preference for appeasement and a “global test” in foreign affairs and endorsed the Bush Doctrine’s policy of pre-emption. And in no uncertain terms, Americans voted for the traditional values upon which our country was founded.

Now, that’s a referendum!

Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com