As a follow-on to PSA's piece about Commander Codpiece and his veto, recall if you will how the Bush crime family celebrated their 2004 electoral "mandate" (all emphasis added):
"President George W. Bush won the greatest number of popular votes of any presidential candidate in history," marveled Vice President Dick Cheney while introducing his boss. "President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation's future, and the nation responded by giving him a mandate."
Yessir, we're talking a mandate here. Um ... by the way, what kind of mandate are we talking here? Oh ... right:
With 99 percent of precincts reporting nationwide, Mr. Bush garnered a record 59,017,382 votes, to Mr. Kerry's 55,435,808 — a 51 percent to 48 percent margin.
Whoo hoo! Yowza! 51 to 48! Smackdown! And don't you fucking suggest that that isn't a mandate:
Never mind the 59.4 million Americans--a record number--who voted for President Bush. Forget that he's the first man since his father in 1988 to win a nationwide majority. According to numerous commentators on the left, Bush still hasn't earned a mandate.
"The risk for Republicans is that they overinterpret the election," New York University political analyst Paul Light told the Arizona Republic. "I don't see a clear message for President Bush here."
Neither does Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne: "A 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate," he claimed.
Adds Peter Beinart of the New Republic: "Already, the president is claiming a mandate for partial Social Security privatization and regressive changes in the tax code, even though he rarely campaigned on these issues and there is no evidence the American public voted for them."
In fact, the president does have a mandate on a number of key issues, topics he talked about repeatedly on the campaign trail.
Fuckin' A -- 51 to 48! The public has spoken, we're in charge so you can all shut the hell up, right? Hang on ... what's this?
There's a standoff between Congress and President Bush over Iraq. Whose side are the people on?
By nearly two to one (59 percent to 33 percent in a recent Pew Research Center poll), Americans say they want their representative to vote for a bill setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
If you need a punchline here, you're truly beyond help.
P.S. As a pre-emptive strike against potential stupid commentary, it's amusing to see how so many people defended the Bush "mandate" by claiming that, in that election, he received the largest number of votes in presidential election history.
This is an idiotic thing to say, and is as meaningless as suggesting that poor people should have nothing to complain about since the minimum wage is currently higher than it's ever been in history.
I trust I don't need to explain that for you.
2 comments:
While I have no doubt that " Americans say they want their representative to vote for a bill setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq", I think that a poll asking such a vague question is worthless. Setting what kind of deadline would be a better question. As it stands, all we really know is that nearly sixty percent of Americans would like the war to end some day, presumably sooner rather than later. If a poll asked about specific lengths of time, from "bring 'em home now!" to "let's give it x more years to see if it'll work out", we would actually know something useful.
Sorry, gram, you're totally off-base here. The issue is not what the withdrawal deadline should be; the issue is whether there should be a withdrawal deadline at all.
The American public has made it clear that they overwhelmingly want to set a deadline of some kind, while Commander Chimpy is equally adamant that he will not support a withdrawal deadline of any kind:
"This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and artificial deadline" for troop pullouts, and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."
That is not simply disagreeing with the Dem's proposed date, it's disagreeing with the fundamental concept of a withdrawal deadline, which means the poll is perfectly reasonable, and your objection is irrelevant.
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