The Next Step

I’m surprised that the country turned out for Bush. I really thought his failures would be clear to the majority of Americans. I’m not clear what’s next.

When I talk to my mother, who voted for Bush, we see the same things from opposite sides. She talks about voter’s rejecting “legislating morality” and I counter with the fact that 11 states added new legislation to ban gay marriage and civil unions.

My step-father, who voted for Bush, complains about “activist judges” and I ask him what that means and I get this buzz phrase “Judges shouldn’t legislate from the bench.” Should Plessy vs. Ferguson have never been overturned by Brown ending separate but equal facilities? Isn’t the whole concept of judicial review anathema to “activist judges.”

My mother talks about voter’s rejecting “big government” and I point out that Bush has presided over one of the largest increases in a decade and that government shrunk under Clinton much more.

I hear other Republicans complain about cuts in military spending and I retort with “How would the military have stopped guys with box cutters?”

Republicans defend Bush’s excesses, even by their standards, with the idea that everything changed on 9/11 and I remind them that Clinton presided over not one, but two, homeland terrorists attacks and captured and tried all people involved in those. He didn’t resort to the wrong-headed approach Bush has decided on which have not resulted in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Republicans call Kerry a “tax and spend liberal” and don’t blink at the Bush “tax cut and spend conservative” missing the obvious fiscal problems that creates.

My mother is the same person who used the tortured phrase of cognitive dissonance “It’s okay, but it’s not right” to describe gay marriage. How do these people hold this doublethink in their head?

I love my parents and I do not mean to pick on them exclusively. They are just the few Republican voters I encounter and I take their stance to be emblematic of the larger Republican base. I genuinely believe that Republican or Democrat everyone wants to make America greater. I just don’t understand how Republican voters, by even their own measurements of success, fail to see improvements but continue voting the same way.

So the presidential election was just one more battle lost in the war. What’s the next battle? How do I go about untwisting the mental contortions and buzzword heavy rhetoric of the Republican voters? I’m a lot more optimistic about 2008 than I was about 2004. I think Democrats are really just now building the infrastructure needed after the Democrat/Republican realignment where the parties seemed to swap sides on major issues. (Remember when the South used to only vote for racist Democrats?) I think the failure of the DLC and moderate Democrats to deliver this election will hopefully mark the end of the Republican-lite agenda that Clinton and crew have been pushing.