Jewish World Review Oct. 17, 2003 /21 Tishrei, 5764

Bob Tyrrell

Bob Greene
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

The Moron Vote


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | I'm wondering. At this point in the Democratic lunge for the presidential nomination, does Dr. Howard Dean have a monopoly on that sector of the Democratic vote that we may classify as the moron vote? Or is the idiotic Sen. John Pierre Kerry chipping away at these serried ranks of oafs?

And, just as an aside, are there still enough Democrats of the type who nominated Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey to give the nomination to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, heir to the governing wing of the Democratic Party?

The other day on CNN, I heard the mentally disturbed Michael Moore dismiss Lieberman as "a Republican." Moore, naturally, admires Howard Dean, the moderate governor of Vermont who now insists that he is a Yippie, circa 1968. Moore is sufficiently mindless to believe that. Lieberman, on the other hand, has for many years been steady in his commitment to the collectivist domestic policies and vigilant foreign policy that New Dealers, Fair Dealers and New Frontiersmen used to govern America for roughly three decades, setting the country on a course that defeated world communism and accomplished some rather good things domestically. To say that Lieberman is a Republican is either stupid or a deception.

Deception plays very well with the Democrats' moron vote, though it is perhaps more accurate to refer to that vote as the indignant moron vote, for it is very indignant and in fact proud of its anger. Anytime I write something discourteous about Howard Dean, I receive a torrent of emails from the indignant moron vote. Usually, the indignado begins by claiming never to have voted before but now to be attracted by the shirt-sleeved medico's illusory virtues.

Now, I wonder if Sen. John Pierre Kerry has nibbled away at Howard Dean's vote. The Vietnam veteran who supported the war in Iraq, but did not support the war, who boasts of his war record, but does not boast of his war record, is certainly an obvious enough fraud to appeal to the moron vote. Moreover, he is sufficiently angry to give the morons goose pimples.

Donate to JWR

That he is a splendid phony is abundantly clear. In fact, he may be the phoniest of all the Democrats now running. This week in The Hill, the indefatigable Sam Dealey, a reporter who has the wit to report not only what a politician says today but what the pol said yesterday, demonstrated what a fraud the Francophile senator from Massachusetts really is.

First, Dealey reports that Howard Dean is chiding Kerry for "flip-flopping on the importance of serving in Vietnam in presidential politics." Then, Dealey reports Kerry's many boasts about how important a credential his military service is. Then, Dealey disinters statements by Kerry in the 1990s denying the importance of a military credential.

Kerry was defending Bill Clinton, the draft dodger about to win the Democratic presidential nomination. In defense of Clinton, Kerry said things such as this, a rhetorical question to Clinton's opponent, President George H. W. Bush, "If service or non-service in the war is to become a test of qualification for high office, you would not have a vice president." He is referring to the fact that Vice President Dan Quayle only served in the National Guard.

Kerry, the veteran who stresses his military service but does not stress his military service, also disparages service in the National Guard. Though you can be sure he will soon insist that he does not disparage service in the National Guard, especially when a reporter notes the fine service the Guard is now performing in Iraq. That quotation directed against Quayle is ancient history. But then there is this quote from Oct. 6. Asked about reinstating the draft, Kerry gratuitously sneers, "There are some people in high office today who pulled strings to get into the National Guard." That is a canard he and the moron vote fling at the president.

Viewing the charges that the Democrats fling at one another, and the charges they fling at the president who it seems to me is almost certain to be re-elected, I have come to a conclusion. These candidates have an instinctive aversion to the truth. On matters large and small, they are with surprising regularity wrong. Apologists explain that they have to be wrong to appeal to their base, the moron vote. I hate to sound like a moralist, but I just do not think that is a sufficient reason for lying, even about yourself.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

10/09/03: The politics of groping and the groping of politics
10/03/03: Is there a witch doctor in the house?
09/26/03: Funny Girly-Boy
09/18/03: Send Arafat to Paris!
09/15/03: The soi-disant party of Latinos comes down hard on a successful Latino
09/05/03: Placating the carpers
08/29/03: A melange of one-issue enthusiasts will win?
08/07/03: Angry partisans
07/31/03: Why no ‘holy cities ’ in America?
07/25/03: They underestimate not only the president, but the American people
07/18/03: The irascible, bigoted Harry Truman was a product of his times
07/11/03: A grand affair of hot colors and surprisingly sedate audience participation
07/04/03: In search of anti-Americanism and the perfect bullfight
06/26/03: Calling on London
06/20/03: Too upsetting for the evening news?
06/12/03: Rain(es)ing Clintoon myths
06/05/03: Hillary-ous is pathetic
05/29/03: Shakedown
05/22/03: End of the last great persecution of the 20th century?
05/15/03 :‘Grey’ turns to grim at Times
05/08/03: The only intellectual force in Western history to gain moral superiority by being wrong
05/01/03: Dinning with Tom Wolfe: More lessons in nusual aspects of American life, hitherto ignored
04/28/03: Ambuscade at scholarly frontier
04/21/03: Stars in search of a galaxy
04/10/03: Baghdad Bob and Tom Daschle
03/31/03: When the media itself becomes the story
03/20/03: Revealed! Estrada is a gifted linguist -- a Japanese-American fluent in Spanish
03/14/03: Genuinely in charge
03/10/03: Stalin and Saddam
03/05/03: They just cannot stomach a protracted alliance with the Bushies
02/25/03: Identity gridlock
02/18/03: People calling Dean a fruitcake are underestimating his political savvy
02/13/03: The new political establishment
01/30/03: The time is now
01/27/03: Witnessing self-love by people completely incapable of self-criticism
01/21/03: Of course our kiddies are depressed
01/13/03: Why is it that Official Washington still believes that a tax reduction means a revenue reduction?
01/02/03: Missing Moi
12/27/02: The grizzled and menacing-looking senator in Confederate drag is … a Dem
12/24/02: Uprooting Christianity in the Holy Land
12/20/02: Under fire, Lott showed an ignobleness that is embarrassing
11/26/02: Bartley's enemies have been routed
11/14/02: Clarence Thomas and the segregationist Mississippi sheriff
11/07/02: I muffed up
10/31/02: Is the American university turning its back on change, on progress?
10/24/02: So why aren't the Dems buoyant?
10/17/02: Mourning the loss of the "yellow-belly"
10/10/02: American politics at its most ignominious
10/03/02: A man above the law, a bully
09/26/02: Is Bob Greene a victim of an anti-Clinton backlash?
09/19/02: I knew Mafiosi and …
09/12/02: Chickens and poseurs
09/05/02: Sympathizing with the Europols
08/29/02: 9-11 did not change us forever
08/22/02: Public persons frivoling with serious matters
08/15/02: Beachcombing among the fat of the land
08/08/02: They pave the way for corruption, not personal responsibility
08/01/02: Believing the unbelievable
07/25/02: The congressional posse comitatus
07/18/02: Cosmopolitan Arab fashion
07/11/02: What the prez actually knows
07/04/02: The vindication of a truly original thinker
06/27/02: The perfect book for Hillary
06/20/02: To say that they were ordinary is not to slight them
06/13/02: Daschle must begin to act like an adult
06/06/02: Lack of "intelligence" --- and sheer stupidity
05/30/02: Revealing a carefully guarded media secret
05/23/02: In these times, thank Heaven for Clinton!
05/16/02: Fast Times at the Church of the Nativity
05/09/02: "Name the Prettiest Suicide Bomber"
05/02/02: Vindication for the Boy Scouts
04/25/02: A topic almost no other columnist will touch
04/18/02: 'Conventional Wisdom' --- and those who defy it
04/11/02: Let the Sun shine in
04/05/02: Hooded men of color in sheets
04/01/02: A McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood
03/21/02: Yakkin' on Yates
03/15/02: No role for Paul Volcker in Enron: the movie
03/07/02: My membership in the Communist Party U.S.A.
02/27/02: This award is bestowed by 'contrarians'
02/21/02: Mike Tyson: Made for Washington?
02/14/02: Enron as underdog?
02/07/02: Freed from the presence of money -- hard or soft -- most politicians would be just as bad
01/31/02: Needed: Bush to make a preemptive strike against his enemies …. Ones who'd like to see him fail even during war
01/24/02: Hucksters will move on to make their next marks
01/17/02: Debonair prez should begin to do the High Life
01/10/02: Move over Twinkies --- "the acne medicine made him do it!"
01/03/02: Leaving the Nazis looking comparatively humane
12/27/01: A "self-made journalist"
12/20/01: Calamities and unanticipated benefits
12/13/01: America's grief ought not to give comfort to those who caused it
12/06/01: Leahy, the strict civil libertarian!? A short-term exploiter of the Constitution is more like it
11/29/01: Welcome to Afghan, Maryland?
11/26/01: So, why don't more folks hate us?
11/15/01: America's quagmire and other certainties
11/09/01: No longer the smug statists, the prodigal Keynesians?
11/01/01: The New Seriousness
10/25/01: Bright lights and the Taliban
10/18/01: Is bin-Laden propaganda from Western intelligence?
10/12/01: No yellow ribbons
10/05/01: Bubba's back --- again!
09/28/01: Exposing peacetime's frauds
09/21/01: So protected, we're vulnerable
09/14/01: At Barbara Olson's home
09/11/01: Duh! All conservatives are racists
08/31/01: Arafat's terrorists have created their own hell
08/24/01: Time for some political prophecy
08/16/01: They claim to be doing so much good
08/10/01: Visiting the source of the White House braintrust
08/03/01: Morality and reality
07/31/01: Blinded by success?
07/24/01: The latest Kennedy capitulation in Massachusetts
07/13/01: Talk about tawdry
07/06/01: Delighting in the Dictator
06/29/01: The G-dphobes
06/21/01: Fashionable Washington is sempiternally in a stew
06/15/01: The limits of hypocrisy
06/08/01: Flagging our general apathy

© 2001, Creators Syndicate