Samuel Silver
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- SINCE I physically live in the vast landmass that voted overwhelmingly for George Bush and am a proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy, I was truly surprised how close the election was. Although the majority of opinion polls had George W. Bush in the clear lead a week or so before the election, Gore closed fast. How could things change that fast?
The Democratic strategy, in conjunction with their supporters in the mainstream media, is to keep a large portion of the electorate ignorant of the facts and then to exploit fear of their opponents based on that ignorance. This fear eventually turns to hatred of their opponents, which precludes any rational discussions with those people who will then passionately vote Democratic. The basic target groups include racial minorities, single women, non-religious people, and those seniors depending on Social Security and Medicare.
In an oversimplification, the Democratic Party can be looked at as a pyramid having multiple layers of supporters.
- At the top are the intellectual (or more accurately, pseudo-intellectual) elite and their fans in the media.
- In the middle are the many traditional, well-intentioned liberals who just don’t have the training or background in economics and history to realize that their well-intentioned collectivist plans are flawed in concept. Centralized government solutions, spending "other people’s money," have never been effective and will never achieve the admirable goals they desire. The law of "unintended consequences" is just too powerful.
- At the bottom of the pyramid are the voters that have been frightened by the Democrats and turned out en masse on Election Day.
Having not heard of this problem with the Voting Rights Act, I did a simple search on the Internet. It appears that the erroneous rumors about the Voting Rights Act have been rampant in the black community for several years. In fact, the Justice Department issued a strongly worded denial in 1998, explaining correctly that the right to vote regardless of race is protected by the 15th Amendment of the Constitution and is not up for reauthorization. There is a state pre-clearance section of the Voting Rights Act up for reauthorization in 2007, but this does not determine black’s right to vote. As for search warrants, this is protected by the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. Yet, these rumors obviously persist and may partially explain why 90% of blacks voted for Gore. After looking into this, I wonder what other rumors are being spread among target groups?
I cannot fault this woman for not knowing that her rights to vote and to be secure from unlawful search are protected by the Constitution and not subject to the whims of a President. I do fault the Democratic leadership, black and white, for exploiting her ignorance and misleading her and many other citizens for their personal political gain. It is one thing for the Justice Department to issue a memo, but if Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Jackson wanted an educated electorate, they could have stopped this nonsense years ago. The fact that they didn’t, speaks volumes.
In addition, during the week prior to the election, the Democrats unleashed their barrage of fear and hatred with cooperation of the television networks:
- The NAACP ran an obnoxiously racist TV commercial about the tragic death of James Byrd in Texas. The ad strongly implied that Bush and his supporters were racists out to kill blacks. Why wouldn’t you hate someone out to kill you? The major networks all but ignored this affront to civility and spent time telling Americans about an irrelevant Republican "Daisy" ad that never ran more than a few times in local markets.
- Democrats called seniors with a taped message from Ed Asner saying that George W. Bush would take away their Social Security. Absolutely no basis in reality, but wouldn’t you fear and hate a man who is lying to you so he can steal your Social Security checks for his "rich friends?" Again the major networks ignored this demagogic campaign of fear and hatred and refused to point out this obvious falsehood, or at least present Bush’s position.
- The media then played up the last minute revelation of a 24 year old DUI charge against Bush without putting it into proper context: Bush had said early in the campaign that he had a past incident(s) in his personal life that he was not proud of and did not want his children to know about. At that time, the media with absolutely no evidence claimed it was cocaine. They now slanted the story to imply you should fear a man (other than Bill Clinton) who hid such "terrible" personal traits? Never mind that Al Gore admitted "limited" use of marijuana, and his best friend at the time now says he lied about his "limited" use. In fact his friend says that Al was a heavy, almost daily user, even during his touted attendance at Divinity School. What the media continually failed to point out is that Boy Genius Gore had a "failure of the spirit" while at Divinity School where according to his biographer, Bill Turque; he failed 5 of the 8 courses he took. At the same time, the media always seemed to omit that George W. Bush earned a MBA from Harvard.
Samuel Silver, a board member of Toward Tradition, writes from Greenville, Mississippi. Comment by clicking here.
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