we are agents of the free
Whether we may like it or not, this is what it all comes down to.
Today's line, and the official unoffical November 3rd prediction.
Also, a chance to get out your NYTspeak decoder rings: As brainier people have said, it's the last paragraph in a mainstream media piece where the creamy-caramel nugget of truth is hid. If Thomas Frank's most recent work is accurate, and there's no reason to say otherwise, the last few graphs of this piece pretty much sum up who Republican voters are and what exactly the Republican Party is harnessing to GOV:
Whether it is all the calculated showmanship of a skilled politician, or the genuine George W. Bush refusing to be smothered by the political process, is not up for discussion at the rallies.
When questions to that effect are posed by journalists, the reaction is typically hostile. Many Republicans who attend Mr. Bush's rallies identify the news media as the main source of his problems, and they do not hesitate to challenge or heckle reporters traveling with the president.
Karen Ciccone, who waved a Bush-Cheney sign at the rally in Manchester, said the blame also extended to Hollywood actors and musicians. Mr. Bush often derides them as being out of touch with American values.
Ms. Ciccone said she refused to view the films or buy the compact discs of performers who campaigned for Mr. Kerry.
This is the substance of the Republican Party, 2004. Not global warming, or nuclear disarmament, or health care, or globalization, but "I don't like what's on my television set. I don't like what's in my newspaper."
This is the reactionary end game for a proud legacy of desperate, bloody work early in the 20th century and through the 1960s for equality and labor rights, as well as the attempt to redistribute some of this country's wealth to those who were instrumental in cultivating it.
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