Even Republicans Fear Hate Bush (and our media sucks for not reporting it)

Not often do I come across articles that fill me with as much indignation as one today did. First, it illustrated the sad state of the mainstream media in this nation as servants of the major parties' political campaigns. Second, it did so by pointing out the disgusting lack of attention paid to longtime traditional Republicans endorsing Senator John Kerry for President. The article is entitled "Even Republicans Fear Bush", and was written by John Nichols of The Nation.

If the United States had major media that covered politics, as opposed to the political spin generated by the Bush White House and the official campaigns of both the Republican president and his Democratic challenger, one of the most fascinating, and significant, stories of the 2004 election season would be the abandonment of the Bush reelection effort by senior Republicans.

Nichols is quite scathing with his words, and I have little to add to what he writes.

The first half of the article is a damning of the mainstream media and an overview of the reasons many of these Republicans have strongly endorsed John Kerry for President. The second half of the article contains 12 forcefully-worded criticisms of our President accompanied by words of support for the Kerry-Edwards ticket from lifelong Republicans. Included in these twelve are Ambassador John Eisenhower (son of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower), former Kentucky Senator Marlow Cook, former Michigan Governor William Milliken, and former U.S. Senator Bob Smith. All but two of the statements are from Republicans who have served in high-level positions in either state or the federal governments.

Nichols concludes by saying:

In the end, of course, the vast majority of Republicans will cast their ballots for George w. Bush on Tuesday, just as the vast majority of Democrats will vote for John Kerry. But the Republicans who plan to cross the partisan divide and vote for Kerry have articulated a unique and politically potent indictment of the Bush administration.

Nichols is completely correct in this statement, but we can still affect some Bush-leaning voters that each of us know. And as Richard said, every vote counts, whether or not you're a resident of a "swing state". Here, most of us have passionately believed for a very long time that Bush has been ravaging our nation. Much of the American public is under the impression that the only people who believe as we do are extreme leftists or anarchists. They have a right to know the truth. Make our position unmistakably clear to them. Kerry must win in a landslide, otherwise this victory may not be enough. The only way to do that is to force the media into reporting that Kerry demolished Bush in this election.

For those who don't have the time to read Nichols' article, I say make the time, but if its not possible, here's a couple of the statements that have been avoided most by the media:

• "Before the current campaign, it might have been argued that at least in affirming the importance of faith and respecting those who profess it the administration had embraced traditional conservative views. But in the wake of the Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry, even this argument can no longer be maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian Church, I found that those ads were not at all in the Christian tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as dishonest and dishonorable. The president should have, too. That he did not undermines his credibility on questions of faith. Some say it's just politics. But that's the whole point. More is expected of people of faith than "just politics."
  
  "The fact is that the Bush administration might better be called radical or romantic or adventurist than conservative. And that's why real conservatives are leaning toward Kerry."
  
  -- Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration and an elder of the Presbyterian Church.
  
  
• "George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naive belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American enemies -- a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky's concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft."
  
  -- Scott McConnell, executive editor, The American Conservative.
  
  
• "The current administration has run the largest deficits in U.S. history, incurring massive debts that our children and grandchildren will have to pay. Two and a half million people have lost their jobs; trillions have been wiped out of savings and retirement accounts. The income of Americans has declined two years in a row, the first time since the IRS began keeping records. George W. Bush will be the first president since Hoover to have a net job loss under his watch... President Bush wanted to be judged as the CEO president, it is time to say, 'you have failed, and you're fired."
  
  -- William Rutherford, former State Treasurer of Oregon