Without a Doubt

I read an article in Sunday’s NYTimes written by Dan Suskind called Without a Doubt. It not only made my blood boil it also made me freeze in my footsteps. Should I be surprised by this article? No, not really but you have to wonder after reading this why any intelligent minded human being would cast a vote for George Bush is beyond me.

I was sent the article by a woman who reads my blog. Even though I had already read it, she encouraged me to share. So, I am.

Question – Is there that many religious fanatics in this country that are voting for Bush because he is supposedly down with the Lord? Are there that many people that are one issue voters such as abortion.
Do people not read between the lines? The Republican’s campaign has been not one praising their last four years but slamming Kerry. Hello! The economy is shit. The deficit is out of control. The job market is poor. The environment is a side note. I’ll stop ranting.

There are few quotes that are a must read from the article. One is from Bruce Bartlett who was the domestic policy adviser to Reagan and treasury official for the first Bush, #41.

”Just in the past few months,” Bartlett said, ”I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ”This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them. . . .

”This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,” Bartlett went on to say. ”He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.” Bartlett paused, then said, ”But you can’t run the world on faith.”

Remember, this is from a moderate Republican. He’s frightened. This is not a liberal Democrat speaking.

Ok, next quote from Joe Biden.

Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ”I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, ”and I was telling the president of my many concerns” — concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. ”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”

Instincts? You must be kidding? Have u ever known a CEO of a corporation not to make decisions based on factual information? If they were going by pure gut, my guess is that they would not be in the job for long. This guy is making gut decisions with people’s lives.

Bottom line, the Republicans, such as John McCain, better take a good look of what they have been party to for the past four years. Politics my ass. Make a stand and stand up for your country and the future of America. They all know that another four years with this President is a huge mistake. If, god forbid, Bush is elected, everyone of those Republican quasi-supporters are going to have to look at themselves in the mirror and say shame on me. Politics must change. Support your country and your countrymen. This guy is an all out disaster on every front. Guaranteed that history will not be kind.

One other thought, if Bush has four more years, I will make a side bet that we will have a scandal that will make the Nixon administration look like honest men.

I hope that we see some Republicans break rank in the next 2 weeks and state the reality. I believe Kerry will reward them in a government that will be united not divided.