Mona Charen suggests 13 Reasons to vote Republican on Nov. 7, many of which are simply wrong. Seven are actually reasons to vote for Democrats.
Larry Gelbart gives us 350 reasons not to vote for Republicans.
Go with Gelbart.
6 thoughts on “Reasons”
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Glenn,
Which of the 13 do you feel are WRONG?
Man, I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to type the long list of which ones were wrong and why– but since you asked:
1) The economy. More than 6.6 million new jobs have been created since August 2003. Yeah, after losing 2.674 million jobs between January 2001 and August 2003, and a population increase of a few million. Go to http://stats.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm and look. The Dow has set record highs multiple times in the past several weeks. Not inflation adjusted, it hasn’t. And how about the S&P 500 or NASDAQ?
Productivity is up, and the deficit is down. Think bad tax cuts in the middle of a war had anything to do with it? As Vice President Cheney summed it up at a recent meeting with journalists, “What more do you want?” Ohh– a reduced deficit, the unemployment rate down to where it was in 99-00, and the economic output from New Orleans restored. The tax cuts proposed by President Bush and passed by a Republican Congress can take a bow. If only they were evenly distributed. I’ll take Clinton’s tax rate if I could have Clinton’s economy back.
2) The Patriot Act. Democrats and liberals mourn this law as a gross infringement upon civil liberties. Yet the much-discussed abuses simply haven’t materialized. Please. Within six months of passing the PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases to use it in RICO cases, drug cases, and telemarketing fraud. We can take examples of the government going after library, ISP, and phone records. There are probably hundreds more, but how would we know? Even Congress hasn’t been given complete information about the government’s use of the Patriot Act.
3) The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, to which liberals clung with passionate intensity, has been cancelled, permitting us to work on missile defense. In the age of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is anyone (except Nancy Pelosi) sorry? Have you seen our missile defense? (Have you seen the price tag?) Heck, have you seen their missiles?
5) There has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Who would have predicted that on 9/12?
7) A.Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling network has been rolled up. Really? Then where are the nukes?
10) Democrats believe in immediate withdrawal from Iraq. If they succeed in forcing us to leave under these circumstances, the United States will suffer a stinging defeat in the war on terror. The terrorists already believe that they drove the Russians from
Afghanistan and
Israel from Lebanon and Gaza. They are convinced they chased us out of Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993. According to
Osama bin Laden and those who share his views, we are militarily strong but psychologically and spiritually weak. Like it or not — and no one likes it — we cannot leave Iraq now without utterly and decisively validating this analysis. Oh, jeez, where do I start? Democrats may not completely agree on where we go from here, but they do agree that Bush has no clue and no credibility and they need to take the keys away from the drunk at the wheel.
11) Democrats would like to eliminate the terrorist surveillance program. No, they’d like to eliminate the “us” surveillance program.
13) Democrats believe that the proper response to Kim Jong Il’s nuclear test is “face to face talks.” That’s what the Clinton administration did for years. It worked out well, didn’t it? Actually, it did. It was when the current administration stopped talking to North Korea that we started having problems.
Yet the much-discussed abuses simply haven’t materialized.
I loved this comment about the Patriot Act.
As if the fact that, according to Ms. Charen, the government has yet to abuse the Patriot Act, that makes it ok.
Or, as Glenn said, let’s try and remember how the federal government has tried to use this Act to make everything related to terrorism (anybody remember the whole ‘piracy supports terrorism’ stuff that was floated for awhile?).
I guess it’s great to live in her little world, where wiretaps, torture, and the suspension of habeus corpus, just three examples of many, haven’t occured.
There has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Who would have predicted that on 9/12?
I guess that makes the people of Bali, London, and Madrid feel better, doesn’t it?
10) Democrats believe in immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Yes, that’s why so many Democrats have asked for a timeline, or said we cannot leave now thanks to Bush’s screwup after screwup.
Glenn covered the last two nicely.
That list is such a joke; it’s nothing more than the same garbage the Republicans have been touting for years – “Vote for us and hope there isn’t another 9/11!”
Glenn, if anyone gives you problems about the Patriot Act, tell them to try to go into a store, buy a box of Advil Cold and Sinus, and be out in five minutes. Can’t be done, because now this over-the-counter drug is behind the counter because of the Patriot Act. Apparently ephedrine is now a terrorist.
Sean, ever heard of crystal meth? That’s driving the ephedrine issue, not the Patriot Act.
Rob, that’s right, but in every store you go into, at least around Philadelphia, there’s a largie-ish sign declaring that sales are limited because of what? The Patriot Act. The crystal meth connection should be enough to get its own ruling and statute. The lawmakers, however, chose to put it under their new comfy blanket of law.