posted 02-23-2004 09:24 AM            

Survey: Anger Against Bush Growing Louder
By NANCY BENAC
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-elect/2004/feb/22/022204786.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - In Arizona, Judy Donovan says she feels desperate for a new president. In Tennessee, Robert Wilson says he finds the president revolting. In Washington state, Maria Yurasek says she'd vote for a dog if it could beat President Bush.

A subtext to this year's presidential campaign is the intense anger that many Democrats are directing toward Bush, an attitude that has been growing in recent months.

"I've never seen anything like it," says Ted Jelen, a political science professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "There are people who just really, really hate this person."

Fully a quarter of Americans - mostly Democrats - tell pollsters they have a very unfavorable opinion of the president, more than double the number from last April. When only Democrats are polled, more than half report they feel that way.

Further, in exit polls conducted during Democratic primaries, a sizable chunk of voters have been describing themselves as not just dissatisfied with Bush but outright angry - 51 percent in Delaware, 46 percent in Arizona and New Hampshire, 44 percent in Virginia and Wisconsin.

"They really have a head of steam up against Bush," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. He said the level of political polarization surrounding Bush, the division between Republicans who favor him and Democrats who don't, exceeds even that for President Clinton in September 1998 during the impeachment battle.

Plenty of presidents have generated intense feelings, of course, but Democrats - and even some Republicans - think the phenomenon is outsized this year.

"I've never seen a Democratic Party more unified and more focused, and the anger helps do just that," said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. "The intensity level is just so high. They're using four-letter words to describe him."

In a recent focus group that Luntz conducted for MSNBC, technicians had to adjust the volume levels because the Bush-haters were "so gosh-darn loud" they were drowning out the president's supporters, who were more numerous, Luntz said. "It was a real problem."

Bush was asked about the anger in a recent interview on NBC and said he found it perplexing and disappointing. "When you ask hard things of people, it can create tensions. And heck, I don't know why people do it," he said.

His campaign spokesman, Terry Holt, dismisses the anger as something stoked by Democratic presidential candidates and confined to core party activists. He said it also reflects Democratic frustration at Bush's success in pushing through his agenda.

John McAdams, a political scientist at Marquette University, said resentment of Bush is particularly strong among liberals who already hold three things against him: "First, he's a conservative. Second, he's a Christian. And third, he's a Texan. When you add all of those things up, that invokes pretty much every symbol of the cultural wars."

"It's particularly galling when somebody who mangles his syntax and doesn't pronounce words extremely well and is from Texas beats you," McAdams added.

Some of the anger at Bush stretches back to his 2000 election, when the president lost the popular vote but took the majority of electoral votes after the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida.

"It's the long view of Bush in the minds of Democrats," said pollster Kohut. "He came into office in a way that they felt was unfair. They gave him the benefit of the doubt and rallied to him after the 9-11 attacks for some time, and then he disappointed them in the way he dealt with Iraq" and by pursuing a more conservative course than they expected.

A Bush opponent can vote against the president only once in November, no matter how intense the anger. So does it matter how much voters dislike him, if these are people who would have voted against him anyway?

Political analysts say the intensity of the anti-Bush sentiment could translate into higher turnout by mobilizing the Democratic base. The possible pitfall for Democrats, however, is that strident anti-Bush rhetoric could turn off swing and independent voters who like Bush personally but might be convinced through reasoned argument that his policies are wrongheaded.

posted 02-23-2004 10:34 AM            

http://www.truthout.com/docs_04/022304F.shtml

Disenchanted Bush Voters Consider Crossing Over
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times

Sunday 22 February 2004

BEACHWOOD, Ohio - In the 2000 presidential election, Bill Flanagan a semiretired newspaper worker, happily voted for George W. Bush. But now, shaking his head, he vows, "Never again."

"The combination of lies and boys coming home in body bags is just too awful," Mr. Flanagan said, drinking coffee and reading newspapers at the local mall. "I could vote for Kerry. I could vote for any Democrat unless he's a real dummy."

Mr. Flanagan is hardly alone, even though polls show that the overwhelming majority of Republicans who supported Mr. Bush in 2000 will do so again in November. In dozens of random interviews around the country, independents and Republicans who said they voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 say they intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year. Some polls are beginning to bolster the idea of those kind of stirrings among Republicans and independents.

That could change, of course, once the Bush campaign begins pumping millions of dollars into advertising and making the case for his re-election.

But even as Democratic and Republican strategists and pollsters warned that a shift could be transitory, they also said it could prove to be extraordinarily consequential in a year when each side is focused on turning out its most loyal voters.

"The strong Republicans are with him," a senior aide to Senator John Kerry said of Mr. Bush. "But there are independent-minded Republicans among whom he is having serious problems."

"With the nation so polarized," he added, "the defections of a few can make a big difference."

In the interviews, many of those potential "crossover" voters said they supported the invasion of Iraq but had come to see the continuing involvement there as too costly and without clear objectives.

Many also said they believed that the Bush administration had not been honest about its reasons for invading Iraq and were concerned about the failure to find unconventional weapons. Some of these people described themselves as fiscal conservatives who were alarmed by deficit spending, combined with job losses at home. Many are shocked to find themselves switching sides.

While sharing a sandwich at the stylish Beachwood Mall in this Cleveland suburb, one older couple — a judge and a teacher — reluctantly divulged their secret: though they are stalwarts in the local Republican Party, they are planning to vote Democratic this year.

"I feel like a complete traitor, and if you'd asked me four months ago, the answer would have been different," said the judge, after assurances of anonymity. "But we are really disgusted. It's the lies, the war, the economy. We have very good friends who are staunch Republicans, who don't even want to hear the name George Bush anymore."

In 2000, Mr. Bush won here in Ohio with 50 percent of the popular vote, as against 46.5 percent for Al Gore.

George Meagher, a Republican who founded and now runs the American Military Museum in Charleston, S.C., said he threw his "heart and soul" into the Bush campaign four years ago. He organized veterans to attend campaign events, including the campaign's kickoff speech at the Citadel. He even has photographs of himself and his wife with Mr. Bush.

"Given the outcome and how dissatisfied I am with the administration, it's hard to think about now," he said. "People like me, we're all choking a bit at not supporting the president. But when I think about 500 people killed and what we've done to Iraq. And what we've done to our country. I mean, we're already $2 trillion in debt again."

A nationwide CBS News poll released Feb. 16 found that 11 percent of people who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 now say they will vote for the Democratic candidate this fall. But there was some falloff among those who voted against him as well. Five percent of people who said they voted for Mr. Gore in 2000 say this time they will back Mr. Bush.

On individual issues, the poll found some discontent among Republicans but substantial discontent among independents. For instance, on handling the nation's economy, 19 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independents said they disapproved of the job Mr. Bush was doing.

"As the president's job rating has fallen, his Democratic supporters have pulled away first, then the independents and now we're starting to see a bit of erosion among the Republicans, who used to support him pretty unanimously," said Evans Witt, the chief executive of Princeton Survey Research Associates. "If 10 to 15 percent of Republicans do not support him anymore, that is not trivial for Bush's re-election."

But Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, suggested that no one in the White House was worried about Mr. Bush's losing much of his base. He said polls continued to show that the president was enjoying the support of 90 percent of Republicans.

Many of those interviewed said that they had experienced a growing disenchantment with the conflict in Iraq over many months, but that only recently had they decided to change their votes.

A number said they had been deeply disturbed by recent statements of David A. Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector, who said he was skeptical about administration claims that Iraq possessed unconventional weapons.

"The lack of evidence on Iraq has really hurt him, and the economy here is bad — there's a lot of unemployment in the mills," said Phyllis Pierce, who is in the steel business in Cleveland and recently decided not to vote for Mr. Bush again.

John Scarnado, a sales manager from Austin, Tex., who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000, said he would vote for Mr. Kerry if the senator won the Democratic nomination.

"I'm upset about Iraq and the vice president and his affiliation with Halliburton," said Mr. Scarnado, a registered Republican who said that he had not always voted along party lines. "I think the Bush administration is coming out to look like old boy politics, and I don't have a good feel about that."

Many of those wavering in their loyalty to Mr. Bush were middle-class voters who said that his tax relief programs had disproportionately helped the wealthy.

"I voted for him, but it seems like he's just taking care of his rich buddies now," said Mike Cross, a farmer from Londonderry, N.H., adding, "I'm not a great fan of John Kerry, but I've had enough of President Bush."

-------
In reference to Christian values of this administration?

Bush has supported the Ashcroft so-called Christian agenda, regardless of whether or not Bush is a Skull and Bones member. The separation of church and state has therefore become a renewed concern and public debate. And it hasn't escaped you that federal judges have undergone more Dem. party scrutiny in this Bush administration due to this fact and also concerns of racism. The recent marriage act also highlights these kinds of concerns as regards separation of church and state. The cell and tissue-cloning issue was also affected by the Christian values of the administration as well as the usual abortion debate and related legislations.

But the piece I posted doesn't refer to these so much as economic concerns and the WMD concerns with Iraq.

posted 02-23-2004 05:06 PM            

A Republican's case against George W. Bush

By Paul Findley

02/21/04: (Gulf News) During my long life, America has surmounted many severe challenges. As a teenager, I experienced the great depression. In World War II, I saw war close-up as a Navy Seabee. As a country newspaper editor, I watched the Korean War from afar.

As a member of Congress, I agonised through the Vietnam War from start to finish. During these challenges I never for a moment worried about America's ultimate survival with its great principles and ideals still intact.

Today, for the first time, I worry deeply about America's future. We are in a deep hole. I believe President George W. Bush's decision to initiate war in Iraq will be the greatest and most costly blunder in American history. He has set America on the wrong course.

I must speak out. As best I can, I must bestir those who will listen to the grave damage already done to our nation and warn of still greater harm if Bush continues his present course during a second term in the White House.

When terrorists assaulted America on 9/11, killing nearly 3,000 innocent civilians, Bush responded, not by focusing on bringing to justice the criminals who were responsible, but by initiating a war against impoverished, defenceless Afghanistan. Even before the dust settled in Afghanistan, the president initiated another war - this one in Iraq, a war planned long before 9/11.

War as weapon

In the name of national security, the president has brought about fundamental, revolutionary changes that threaten our nation's moorings. At home and abroad, he has undercut time-honoured principles of the rule of law.

Abroad, he has made war a ready instrument of presidential policy instead of reserving it as a last-resort, should peril confront our nation.

In public documents, he claims the personal authority to make war any time and any place he alone chooses and the authority to use force to keep unfriendly nations from increasing their own military strength. His power is unprecedented. He directs a military budget greater than all other nations combined. At his instant, personal command is more military power than any nation in all recorded history ever before possessed.

He proclaims America the global policeman and for that role he has already expanded a worldwide system of US military bases. Four new ones are in place in Iraq and four others near the Caspian Sea. He orders the development and production of a new generation of nuclear arms for US use only, meanwhile threatening other nations – Iran and North Korea, for example – against acquiring any of their own.

Unleashing America's mighty sword, he brings about regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq but mires our forces in quagmires from which escape seems unlikely for many years. He isolates America from common undertakings with time-tested allies. He trivialises the United Nations and violates its Charter.

The president offers wars without end, and the Congress shouts its approval. But his use of America's vast arsenal is so reckless that he is regarded widely as the most dangerous man in the world.

Here at home, in his frantic quest for terrorists, he stoops to bigoted measures based on race and national origin, tramples on civil liberties, and spreads fear and disbelief throughout the land. Those of Middle Eastern ancestry, and many others, buckle under government-inflicted humiliations and abuses with trepidation, sorrow and resentment.

Frustrated by Iraqi dissidents who protest the occupation by killing US troops almost daily, the president reverts to war measures. He orders heavy aerial bombing in wide areas of the countryside.

Even as body bags pile high, the president seems oblivious to war's horror. The rockets and one-ton bombs may kill a few Iraqi guerrillas and cause others to pull back and pause, but they kill and maim innocent civilians, level homes, turn neighbourhoods into rubble, and permanently blight many lives. They create deep-seated outrage, not co-operation.

The Iraqi carnage is piled alongside the simultaneous destruction and blighting of American lives. More than 500 US military personnel have been killed and, according to one estimate, nearly 10,000 have been wounded. Ponder that fact.

Ten thousand American families permanently blighted in a war the US initiated. Mark Twain, writing of war, once asked, "Will we wring the hearts of the unoffending widows with unavailing grief?"

The president overreacts to 9/11 by leading America into a lengthy fiery trial that may last far into the future-years of US-initiated wars designed to punish regimes believed to harbour terrorists. This is not the America my generation fought to preserve in World War II.

World domination

Starting wars will not bring a just peace. The president should ponder deeply why many people in many nations engage in anti-American protest. The answer: People worldwide, especially in Iraq and Palestine, are livid over grievances against America. Almost all Iraqis are glad Saddam Hussain is out of power, but many of them – the total may be a substantial majority – see America as arrogant, biased, untrustworthy, and bent on world domination.

Here are some of the reasons:
* In the l980s – the height of Saddam's cruel treatment of Kurds and other Iraqi citizens – the US government served as the dictator's silent, uncomplaining partner, helping him battle Iran by providing intelligence, and critical military supplies, even some components of weapons of mass destruction.

* At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqis had a bitter experience with the president's father. President George Bush Sr. publicly urged the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. His call prompted a strong uprising, but Bush refused US support in any form. This bleak rejection prompted Saddam to use helicopter gun-ships to slaughter dissidents by the hundreds. He had retained use of these lethal aircraft in a provision of the US-approved armistice.

* Iraqis also remember bitterly that US fighter planes enforced sanctions on the people of Iraq for a decade after the Gulf War. This embargo was so harsh it led to immense civilian suffering, including the death of at least half-a-million Iraqi infants.

* Today, Iraqis are wary of the president's motives and dependability. Many doubt that his true objectives are, as he now states, establishing freedom and democracy in their country, or, as he earlier stated, destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Aware that he ignored offers of conciliation from Saddam's emissaries before the invasion, they believe he harbours dreams of an American empire and wanted the war in Iraq, come what may.

* Their greatest and most deep-seated complaint is Bush's failure to make even the slightest move to halt America's anti-Arab bias. For example, the president has made no effort to distance America from Israel's colonialism.

He pays lip-service to statehood as a goal for the Palestinians, but he has done nothing to stop Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's brutality againt the Palestinians – assassinations, military forays that leave vast death and destruction, high walls that confine Palestinians like cattle, and the steady usurpation of more Palestinian land.

Bush seems unconcerned by the worldwide outrage at America's massive, unconditional, uncritical support of Israel, without which the Jewish state could never have carried out its humiliation and devastation of Palestinian society.

Bush is overwhelmed by the influence of religious zealots – both Zionists and fundamentalist Christians. He ignores America's own heavy guilt for the plight of Palestinians. He fails to recognise that more than a billion Muslims worldwide, along with many millions of non-Muslims, are deeply aggrieved at this complicity.

New colonialism

Bush offers an exquisite example of close-in hypocrisy. On one side of a Middle East border, he tries to convince Iraqi Arabs that he offers them democracy and freedom while, at the same time on the other side of the border, he supports Israel's violent denial of these identical rights for Palestinian Arabs.

Iraqis worry that US occupation will become a new colonialism – indefinite US control of Iraqi oil reserves, Israeli-style brutality, and a US-forced treaty that will keep Iraq from helping the Palestinians.

Bush is so befuddled by the awful carnage of 9/11 and rumours of more assaults to come that he does not see what is vivid to most of the world – the real ground zero of terrorism is in Palestine, not Manhattan. He ignores the real ground zero at great peril to America.

This issue surmounts all others in the presidential political campaign. It impels me to speak out against what Bush is doing. I am a Republican, and I will remain in the Party of Lincoln. I feel no joy in making this case against the president. He may be sincere in his stewardship, but he is wrong – dead wrong – in the direction he is taking our country.

What should be done? Must the president proceed with wars without end?

The president's best war decision is purely political one, and it is plain, peaceful, generous and just. He must make a clean break from Israel's scofflaw behaviour.

If Bush has the will, he can easily free himself and America. If he acts, he will transform the grim scene in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East into bright promise. Any day he chooses, the president can instantly – without firing a shot – quiet guerrilla warfare in Iraq and anti-American protests throughout the world.

All he needs to do is inform Sharon that all aid will be suspended until Israel vacates the Arab territory Israeli forces seized in June 1967. US aid is literally Israel's lifeline, so the ultimatum would be electrifying evidence that the US, at long last, will do what is right for Arabs and Muslims, while still protecting Israel from attack.

If Bush acts, the Iraqi people will have reason to believe, for the first time, that the US government truly opposes colonialism.

Co-existence

The ultimatum would prompt rejoicing worldwide, not just among Iraqis and Palestinians. Opinion polls show that a large majority of Israelis, weary of the long, bloody struggle to subjugate the Palestinians, would welcome co-existence with an independent, peaceful Palestine.

An impressive foundation for this presidential ultimatum already exists. All member-states of the Arab league, plus Hamas and Hezbollah, unanimously offered peace-for-withdrawal four years ago.

A similar plan called the Geneva Accords was recently announced jointly by former officials of Israel and Palestine. Almost simultaneously, four retired heads of Israeli intelligence even urged full, unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.

By standing resolutely for justice for Palestinians, who are mostly Muslim, Bush would virtually end anti-American protests and strengthen moderate forces worldwide.

Will Bush liberate America from endless wars and chart a constructive, peaceful new future for our nation? If he does so promptly, he will be a shoo-in for re-election. If he does not, I will join other Republicans - there will be many of us - in urging his defeat.

Paul Findley, a member of Congress for 22 years, is the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby and chairman emeritus of the Council for the National Interest. He writes books and articles from his home in Jacksonville, Illinois, and lectures widely on international affairs.

posted 02-23-2004 06:08 PM            

The Rant

Republicans Who Support 'Anybody But Bush'
By DOUG THOMPSON

Feb 23, 2004, 01:57

George Meagher of Charleston, South Carolina, is a veteran and lifelong Republican who, by his own admission, put his “heart and soul” into working for George W. Bush in 2000.

Meagher organized veterans and once proudly displayed pictures of him and his wife with Bush.

No more. Meagher may vote Democratic this fall because he’s fed up with what he sees as lies and deceit by President Bush and the Republican leadership in Washington.

“I should be all choked up at not supporting the President,” says Meagher. “But when I think about the 500 Americans killed in a war, with what we’ve done to Iraq and with what we’ve done to our own country, I can’t see any other way. Look at it. We’re already $2 trillion in debt. Something has to be done.”

Meagher is not alone when it comes to Republicans who are having serious second thoughts about George W. Bush.

John Scarnado, a registered Republican and sales manager from Austin, Tex., voted for Bush in 2000 but now says he will vote for John Kerry if the Massachusetts Senator wins the Democratic nomination.

Scarnado cites Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney’s ties to scandal-scarred Halliburton as two reasons he can’t vote for Bush again.

“It’s just too much old boy politics with the Bush administration,” Scarnado says. “I don’t like that.”

Neither does Londonderry, New Hampshire farmer Mike Cross, who voted Republican in 2000 and who says he doesn’t care much for John Kerry but has “had enough of George W. Bush.”

In travels around the country in recent weeks, I’ve found many Republicans who feel betrayed by their own party. They say the President lied about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, has abandoned basic Republican principles like a balanced budget and now ignores states' rights.

“He acts more like Bill Clinton every day,” says one state GOP chairman. “How am I expected to rally our party to support someone like that?”

Some say they may stay home on Election Day. Others say they will hold their nose and vote Democratic.

“I’ve had with George W. Bush’s lies and his fat cat buddies,” says Sandra Waterson, a banking executive in St. Louis. “He’s a disgrace to the Presidency and the Republican Party.”

Tim Blevins, a Vietnam veteran from Waterloo, Iowa, isn’t fond of John Kerry’s antiwar activities after he came back from Vietnam but says “Kerry went to Vietnam and fought like a man. He didn’t use his daddy’s connections to hide in the Air Guard and avoid fighting for his country like Bush.”

Publicly, Republican strategists say they are not worried about dissension in the GOP ranks but privately they admit real concern.

“The fallout is significant,” admits one GOP pollster. “We could be seeing as much as 15 percent of Republicans who won’t vote for the President’s reelection.”

This jives with a recent nationwide CBS News poll that shows 11 percent of those who voted for Bush in 2000 now say they will support the Democratic candidate. Another poll by Princeton Survey Associates finds 19 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independents say they can’t support Bush’s re-election.

Bill Flanagan, an Ohio Republican, is one of those.

“The lies and our boys coming home in body bags are reasons enough,” he says. “I can vote for John Kerry. I can vote for just about any Democrat over George W. Bush.”

The defections aren’t limited to voters. In the last two months, a dozen Republican members of Congress have told me they will distance themselves from Bush in their reelection campaign.

At a recent GOP retreat, House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert faced hostile Republican conservatives, led by Rep. Chris Cox of California.

At one point during a heated closed-door debate, one angry GOP house member told Hastert: “We might as well have a Democrat in the White House. At least we know what to expect from a Democratic President.”

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