Today’s
Washington Times blares the headline:
“Bush’s plunge in polls tied to domestic issues”.
Indeed, like his father before him Mr. Bush has demonstrated that he is a capable and splendid wartime commander-in-chief. Thank God that it was President Bush on 9/11 and not President Gore – we’d all be wearing burkas and praying toward Mecca five times a day.
However, also like his father he has proven a colossal disappointment on the home front. According to the Times the two issues driving the Presidential approval woes are immigration and economic. The economic issue is a red-herring, fed by a media insistent on painting a booming economy and prosperous nation as the opposite. The immigration issue is very real and why hundreds of talk radio listeners, mostly conservatives and mostly republicans are
traveling with me to Washington, DC this Month (April).
Now that the horrifying sentence of death by torture (starvation) has been carried out on Terri Schiavo, while the President stood by and did nothing, he will face a new problem. When push came to shove the President’s much touted “Culture of Life” was exposed as an apparently cynical and hollow political ruse void of intent beyond creating a sound-bite saleable to the base. Moral leadership at home is as important as being a splendid wartime commander-in-chief, yet when this occassion arose to provide that leadership our president failed to provide that moral leadership. How will he now? How can he now?
Today on my weekly
Fox News Channel appearance I was asked about the political implications of Terri's death, they will be considerable. With lower judicial nominations by the president already being slapped around by the congress, his sinking approval ratings, and lack of moral leadership via action to accompany his words will likely translate into no juice with which to press a reform agenda. For this reason the coming opening(s) on the Supreme Court will not be filled by reform-minded nominees. Any such appointment will be aborted long before confirmation. Deals will have to be cut and without a citizen army behind him the president – and we - will be at the mercy of the left.
It will be said that Mr. Bush failed to act in the case of Ms. Schiavo because public opinion told him so. It should be noted that this president has a history of ignoring polls and public opinion; for better in Iraq, and for worse in immigration…and now in the case of the first casualty of the next Holocaust.
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Listen to 1530 AM KFBK weeknights from 7-10 PM for details on how you may join in me banging pots and pans for immigration reform in the very belly of the beast, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. this April 23-28!
Mark Williams is a member of the
Society of Professional Journalists, and
Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. His work appears in this publication, on
Fox News Channel and nightly on Sacramento’s
1530 AM KFBK radio. For more on Mark and his background visit his
web site.
Published: March 31, 2005, 6:59 am |
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