The New York Times Week in Review yesterday had a fascinating cover story or front-page story: “From FDR to GWB, Can Anyone Unseat FDR?” and I said, “Hmm, shazam! Something’s happening here, folks.” In the first place have you noticed that presidential initials are almost the exclusive province of liberals? We’ve had FDR. We had JFK. We had LBJ. But we didn’t have any JEC, Jimmy (Earl) Carter. We had no RWR, Ronald Wilson Reagan. We had no GHWB, but we’ve always had these initials for Democrat liberal presidents and FDR and JFK are the two biggies. But this story yesterday, “From FDR to GWB, Can Anyone Unseat FDR?” I think after all the whacks upside the head the liberals may be starting to pause and think about what is facing them, and I think part of this is Bush is intent to reform Social Security. This is the New Deal as far as they’re concerned and that’s their whole legacy, don’t misunderstand and mistake how important preserving Social Security as FDR designed it is to the liberals’ future, and so now they’re looking at Bush taking on FDR! That’s how they’re going to try to position it to the liberal intelligentsia. “He’s gonna what? He’s going to try to unseat FDR? Why, we can’t allow that to happen!”
But the fact on that they’re even considering that it’s a possibility has caused them pause. Bush delivered a stirring inaugural address, and the media reaction to it was as interesting as the words themselves. I mean, as I went through Friday, in a brilliant monolog, it’s unfathomable to me that the paranoia and the controversy a speech extolling the virtues of human freedom and liberty have caused in the American left. Imagine, if you will, the adulation, the adoration, the applause if, say, that message had been delivered by FDR or JFK or even Mario Cuomo. If Mario Cuomo had given that speech why they’d still be having weekend orgasms over it. Can you imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had delivered the words in Bush’s second inaugural? Why, I mean, they’d be beside themselves with praise. I think that the media has yet to understand. Well, I know that they have yet to understand and appreciate and accept that Bush is a legitimate president. They still believe he’s illegitimate, that he represents that “tantrum” thrown by a bunch of two-year-olds that Peter Jennings said on the radio following the 2000 elections, but this piece “From FDR to GWB, Can Anyone Unseat FDR?”
When the New York Times can wake up to a discussion of FDR’s New Deal and Bush’s new New Deal, even if they’re doing it from the prism of fear, you have to realize that reality is setting in on these people. Not all of them, and it may only be a temporary glancing blow. They may still maneuver themselves into utter denial. But how many two-by-four whacks across the head does it take to reach a liberal? For instance, they didn’t get it when he was inaugurated the first time. They didn’t get it when he dealt with terrorism successfully. They didn’t get it when he revived a depressed economy. They didn’t get it when he held the House and the Senate in ’02. They didn’t get it when he won reelection and increased his congressional majorities. They didn’t get it when Afghanistan voted. They didn’t get it when Ukraine got the vote and voted, and now on the verge of Iraq and its first vote after his vision address, after his resolve on Social Security reform, maybe enough of these two-by-four compaction across the head are starting to get it. There’s also a story…where is this?
This is Todd Lindbergh. He’s a conservative writer, but this is from SignOnSanDiego.com a San Diego newspaper: “Bush’s Complex Personality Confounds Experts.” Oh, really? Complex personality? I thought he was a dunce? I thought Bush was an ignoramus and a cowboy? I thought Bush was an intellectual inferior. I thought he was a frat boy. I thought he had no depth or substance. I thought Dick Cheney ran the White House? Now they’re all concerned about Bush’s “complexity.” So, you know, at some point the big picture is going to have to dawn on these people as to what Bush’s vision is and what is happening. We’re going to have elections in Iraq on Sunday. We’ve had them in Afghanistan; we had them in Ukraine, and the people there were willing to lose their lives for these elections. You know, by the whacks across the head, I mean, everything that Bush said he’s going to do he’s done. He went into Afghanistan, rooted the Taliban and Al-Qaeda out. He got rid of Saddam Hussein. He cut taxes. He has put Iran and North Korea in the Axis of Evil. At some point they’ve got to look at history and realize what’s happening, and not from their standpoint. They are looking at history and asking, “Why can’t we win?” but I think this piece in the New York Times — and I only say this because so much of the rest of liberalism takes its lead from the New York Times.
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