Bring on Bush?s full-meal deal
Democrats should stop nit-picking the assertion of Vice President Dick Cheney that President George W. Bush won a mandate with his 3 percent margin of victory in last week?s election, and let him run with it. The sooner the nation gets Bush?s full-meal deal?the better.
With a majority of Republicans in both the Senate and the House, the president should have an easy time converting his promises into national policies.
It?s time the real price and delicious taste of Bush?s policies come home to every dinner table in America.
This is not to say that the donkeys should get in bed with the elephants. On the contrary. The donkeys should bray as loud and as long as they ever have in the history of nation while the elephants trump the noise with their votes.
The motto of Bush?s loyal opposition should be, Bring It On.
Bring on the continued export of American jobs to low-wage nations. Voters in North Carolina, which lost textile mill jobs by the hundreds, and Texas, which lost its electronics plants to Mexico, okayed the losses when they put their states in the president?s column.
Bring on the privatization of Social Security. Retirees and boomers on the brink of retirement should smile while the president diverts their Social Security payments into the private accounts of 20-somethings. They should engage in private enterprise, perhaps selling pencils, to finance their old age.
Social Security reform will give 20-somethings a valuable lesson in personal finance. Now they can join the millions who have watched life savings suddenly vanish in a stock market populated by unregulated corporations.
Bring on the reluctant professional soldiers. Members of the military trapped by what has become open-ended enlistment or upset by the shrinkage of veterans? benefits should get tough and quit whining about the policies of an administration they escorted to office in large numbers.
Bring on the draft. When Congress renews the draft for military service, young people will find that their futures lie in Humvees somewhere in the Middle East or Korea. The slackers didn?t bother going to the polls in any greater numbers than they did four years ago. Oh, well.
Bring on a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade and return the nation to the upright and moral days when desperate women--and their fetuses?died of botched abortions in back alleys.
Bring on a national sales tax that will tax the poor and subsidize second, third, fourth and fifth homes for the nation?s wealthiest citizens. Keep up the binge of drunken federal spending because fiscal sobriety is no fun?just ask the states.
Bring on climate change caused by vehicle emissions. After all, the melting polar ice pack will annoy only the bears, and rising oceans will swamp only areas that voted wrong?New England and the West Coast. Still, even conservatives may miss the white sand beaches of the Caribbean islands consumed by the sea.
Bring on the continued assault on civil liberties that makes it OK to jail suspicious people without a hearing or a lawyer. Bring on the military tribunals that are setting a worldwide precedent for the return of Communist-style hearings in which evidence against the accused is presented in secret.
Bring on prayer in schools so the arguments can begin about which Christian prayers the government will approve and which it will reject.
Bring on the creationist litmus test for science teachers and send evolution back to the swamps.
And last, but not least, bring on Yucca Mountain. Red-state Nevada should shut up about how it?s being mistreated by construction of a nuclear waste storage facility that Bush supports.
The 48 percent minority can hope for one of two things.
First, that four more years may prove it wrong about the merits of Bush?s policies. Or, that when his policies are solidly lodged in the national gullet, it?s not too late for the Heimlich maneuver.
