Democratic presidential candidate and former Vietnam War protestor Sen. John Kerry (D – Mass.) delighted a gathering of conservatives in early August by mocking them as "goons sent by George Bush" to protest his campaign at a rally in Milwaukee.
Opposite the park, utilizing their First Amendment rights, the protestors shouted "Four more years!" as the saucy and sexy ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz-Kerry responded, "They want four more years of hell!"
Horning the crowd were the Marquette University College Republicans. While I was not in attendance, I (and others) bashfully accept Kerry's title of "goon." The Pere Marquette Park incident drew national and international media attention, the newest in a campaign exemplified by Kerry's convention speech hypocrisy demanding President Bush maintain a positive campaign as Democratic propagandist-in-chief Michael Moore sat side by side President Jimmy Carter in Boston.
Thus far, the Democrats' "positive" campaign themes have included an Internet ad by pro-Kerry MoveOn.org equating President Bush to Adolf Hitler and countless anti-Bush books, highlighted by an especially telling "novel" by Nicholson Baker, "Checkpoint." The book's premise is a long conversation between two men about methods to assassinate Bush. And it's not even September yet.
Far leftists are forced to demagogue because they offer no alternative vision for America. With the economy in full-fledged recovery from the mild Clinton hiccup in 2001, they must turn attention away from a booming economy. The Bond Market Association issued a devastating prediction for the year — devastating for the left — that the gross domestic product will grow 4.6 percent this year, the highest in 20 years, or since President Ronald Reagan ran for reelection.
The Bush tax cuts, sullied as giveaways to "the rich" actually took 7.8 million low income Americans off the tax rolls, and increased the percentage of the tax burden of the top 20 percent of income earners from 64 to 64.3 percent.
The Kerry camp continues to denounce Bush's leadership in the war on terror, defaming an administration that has managed to protect America from any terrorist attack on our soil for nearly three years. In the Aug. 10 Christian Science Monitor article "Banner week in the war on terror," Alexandra Marks and Owais Tohid labeled an early week in August "what may have been the best week for international intelligence agencies in their fight against Al Qaeda since 9/11."
Their praise followed dozens of arrests in Pakistan and England, including arrests of operatives of the 1998 African embassy bombings. Before Bush took office, seven terrorist nations existed, and today four remain. America eliminated the Taliban in Afghanistan, liberated Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein and Libya has renounced weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Libya's dictator, Muammar al-Qadhafi, explained to Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi that he renounced WMDs because he "didn't want to end up in a hole like Saddam Hussein." These advances mark the steadfast progress of freedom over terrorism across the world.
Kerry finds himself at the end of an empty two-decade Senate career. Its only inclusion in this election is a 1986 floor speech about "seared" memories of Cambodia and President Richard Nixon in 1968. And so he has turned to his controversial stint in Vietnam as the basis of why he ought to be elected. That controversy is for another Viewpoint, but I note Kerry's declaration for his opponents to "bring it on."
We make it our promise to you, senator, to do just that. Bush has a four-year record of making America stronger at home and safer in the world, and we look forward to debating the merits of that record, and the case for "four more years."
Collar is a sophomore economics and political science major.
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