I have been amazed, amused and confused by various responses to Bush’s re-election this last week. My thoughts aside, which are pretty ho-hum, this Op-Ed article is quite fascinating.
I’m a generally conservative guy (but I’m not registered Republican, I’m ‘unaffiliated’ or some other non-sense term that means, “Please don’t pigeon hole me.”) and I’m not a closet Christian, but I’ve been flabbergasted that so many web sites and news blurbs cited ‘Evangelicals’ as the source of Bush’s win. For crying out loud, there are lots of states with a very small percentage of actual Christians (where Christian does not equal WASP) but where conservative values tend to be held. Heck, I left the Bible Belt to find a home church 🙂
What I’m most interested in is some reasons why I don’t think Kerry won:
- Anything but Bush is hardly a reason to vote for Kerry, and it’s really not a reason to vote against Bush. It just says that someone disagrees with Bush.
- Bush Lied. Yup. Most likely he spun, or lied, about a lot of stuff. This is typical for politicians, no matter what stereo-type they get labeled with (including Bush’s Christianity). People apparently aren’t expecting truth from politicians or televangelists.
- Bush is against Stem Cell Research which could hold the cure to (insert many diseases here). I want to state right now that I am for stem cell research. With one condition: don’t get the stem cells from aborted babies. The reason this didn’t win people over to the Kerry camp is because not enough Americans recognize this as the issue it is. There is a lot of ignorance when it comes to medicine and the common United States citizen.
- The War on Terror is never ending. You may know that. I know that. However, considering that most of the people voting attend religious ceremonies two or less times a year their recognition that terrorism in the middle-east is often based on religious motivation – they don’t think about it and they don’t get it.
- Peoples children are dying in Iraq. Voters don’t want people to die. However, when you calculate that the number of US citizens that die every month from car accidents in the United States is higher than the number who have died in Iraq in all of that time, the fatality rate has been very low[1]. Granted zero deaths is better than even one death. I’m personally not for war, and don’t want us in Iraq (or any other country) either, but I think that voters didn’t buy this argument.
- Gay (marriage, unions, governmentally recognized relationships). Many Americans may not be homophobes (or many may be, I don’t know enough Americans to tell you this) but I think that this issue really didn’t grab the attention of John and Jane Doe because Will and Grace is their one contact with homosexuality – except if you count their aunty’s hair dresser.
This is a very small list and I know many more arguments were leveled during the time of the presidential running (or, if you want to be humorous, the running of the bulls [as in bull pucky that came out in the mud slinging]). My recommendation for those against Bush’s presidency is to not marry a Canadian, move to Canada or protest all over the place. Instead, move to California, they’ve got plenty of room (not really), join a cult (to counter the Evangelicals) or marry a Canadian so they can move down here and populate the country with Candadian ideas and accents (Pretty good idea, eh?).
I’m interested in intelligent conversation on this and would like to hear other arguments I didn’t list and see what else we can come up with. Also, what candidates do you prognosticate for the next presidential election? Powell verses H. Clinton? That would be quite the race because you’d have a black male verses a woman. Of course Arnold Schwartzeneiger verses Obama would be even more intense! OK, I’m going to bed.
Randy, while I agree that specifically all your points were contributing factors to Bush’s win, I have to strongly disagree with your reasoning that the number of deaths in Iraq is somehow insignificant. I’m not sure of the point you’re trying to make here. Are you saying that the American people found the death toll acceptable?
As for comparing the war’s death toll with auto accidents, perhaps a different comparison, or none at all would serve your point better. I just find the comparison of auto accidents and war irrelivant for two reasons.
A) Car crashes are accidental deaths, war is not. We actively chose the war and knew people would die. Its purpose is an instrument of death, whereas cars are tools of transportation.
B) Comparing the number dead of each group doesn’t take into account that they’re completely different sample sizes. 5.9% of coalition forces sent to Iraq have died, 0.01% of Americans die in car accidents per year. War is *far* more deadly that our auto transportation system.
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock
http://www.unitedjustice.com/stories/stats.html
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm
The points I’m making in that statement are specifically that:
1) People are expecting casualties
2) There have been far fewer casualties in total and over time when compared to various other wars.
I am not saying that even 1 casualty is OK, I’d prefer peaceful negotiation until the point where negotiations are obviously not going to work. Given a lack of real intelligence information and comprehensive knowledge I’m not going to attempt to give an opinion on whether or not the war was justified based on Weapons of Mass Destruction.
However, Saddam was a nasty evil dictator and I think many Iraqis are relieved to be freed from his dictatorship. His absence is probably not having any major effect on the ‘War on Terror.’