[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Dear Christian Conservative Voter

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>Those Who Voted for Bush May Be In for a Big Surprise
>
>Concerns closer to his heart could trump all that talk
>about values
>
>by Jonathan Chait
><http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait5nov05,1,2283812.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions>
>
>Dear rural/exurban Christian conservative voters:
>
>Congratulations on your election victory. By going to
>the polls in unprecedented numbers Tuesday, you
>overwhelmed an enormous Democratic turnout and returned
>President Bush to office, along with a number of very
>conservative senators. Now Bush is preparing to repay
>your efforts by moving immediately on your highest
>priorities: a flat tax and privatizing Social Security.
>
>Oh, wait. You didn't particularly hanker for those
>things, did you? The election is so far in the past now
>that it has receded into a hazy memory. But as I recall,
>you voted for Bush because of his position on one issue
>- he opposes gay marriage - and on the general principle
>that he is a godly man who shares your values. Now Bush
>has decided, conveniently enough, that those values are
>identical to those of his wealthy financiers. (Go to any
>meeting of the Club for Growth, a group of affluent,
>libertarian-leaning Bush backers who mostly live in
>Washington and New York City. I'm sure you'll find them,
>like victorious Okla-homophobe Sen. Tom Coburn, deeply
>concerned about rampant high school lesbianism in the
>Sooner State.)
>
>Bush is claiming the election as a mandate. There are,
>however, a couple of ways to interpret that. The
>conventional meaning is that a candidate gained office
>by promising to do a certain thing. Ronald Reagan in
>1980 had a mandate to cut taxes and bolster the
>military. Bill Clinton in 1992 had a mandate to raise
>taxes on the rich, expand healthcare, reform welfare.
>Those were the central promises of the two campaigns.
>
>Bush uses the word somewhat differently. As he told
>reporters Thursday, "I earned capital in the campaign -
>political capital - and now I intend to spend it."
>
>What that means is that all you small-town folk voted
>for him not to pursue an agenda but just because he
>embodies family values. That gives him political power
>that he can use for purposes utterly unrelated to the
>source of his popularity. Sure, Bush mentioned some of
>these purposes in the campaign. But the references
>tended to be perfunctory and in code. Start with taxes.
>
>Though Bush talks about tax "simplification," he doesn't
>seriously believe it. He has littered the tax code with
>complicated new provisions, including a ludicrous
>corporate tax bill stuffed with special provisions for
>sausage producers, foreign dog-race gamblers and the
>like. Simplification really means making the tax code
>flatter - i.e. less progressive. He doesn't care about
>making taxes simpler; he just wants rich people to pay a
>smaller share of them. There's little evidence to
>suggest small-town Ohioans flocked to the polls so they
>could have a portion of George Soros' tax burden shifted
>onto themselves.
>
>On Social Security, Bush was just as evasive. Here,
>again, the tiny minority of people who closely follow
>this understood his code words. He wants to divert
>Social Security taxes into private accounts. Because
>those taxes pay for the benefits of current retirees,
>his plan would require cutting benefits or driving the
>national debt even higher.
>
>Bush, of course, went to great pains to distance himself
>from these unpleasant facts. In 2001, he appointed a
>commission that proposed three plans to partly privatize
>Social Security, but he declined to embrace the panel's
>findings. A few weeks before the election, a New York
>Times Magazine story reported that Bush told GOP donors
>he planned to push privatization after the election.
>John Kerry's campaign circulated a nonpartisan study
>showing what the benefit cuts in one of the commission's
>plans would entail. Bush's spokesman dismissed the
>charge that he favored privatization or benefit-cutting
>as a "false, baseless attack."
>
>Here's what Bush said Thursday: "I had asked [Daniel
>Patrick Moynihan], prior to his passing, to chair a
>committee of notable Americans to come up with some
>ideas on Social Security, and they did so. And it's a
>good place for members of Congress to start."
>
>Got that? Last week, if you had described Bush as
>advocating the commission's plans, he would have
>denounced you for promoting a hysterical lie. Now they
>are at the top of the list of things he's saying he was
>elected specifically to enact.
>
>Meanwhile, what about opposing gay marriage, the one
>mandate Bush might legitimately claim? Earlier this
>year, Bush barely lifted a finger in support of a
>constitutional amendment banning it. (Compare this to
>the furious arm-twisting he performs to get moderates to
>back his tax cuts.) If he has a mandate to do anything,
>it's to bring up the amendment again. However, he's said
>nothing about doing so, and nobody expects him to.
>
>No surprise there - it's hardly in the Republican
>Party's interest. If gay marriage is banned everywhere,
>what's going to bring all those heartland conservatives
>to the polls next time?
>_______________________________________________________
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand