Bush drops compassionate conservatism

[Cocoa]

media doesn't notice...

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8091

<snip>

Because compassionate conservatism is out, and comprehensive conservatism is in. Only a tiny percentage of the electorate is up for grabs this year; maybe five percent. Political guru Karl Rove understands well that the administration's record makes fighting for that five percent a challenge. So the reelection campaign is clearly and only about shoring up the right-wing vote.

Hence, the about-face on the NAACP. Hence, the attempts to keep the gay-marriage issue in the news from time to time, just to remind his base that, even if the atheistic left-wing media have written the issue off, he has not. Hence, the overwhelming likelihood that Bush will stand by Dick Cheney despite some calls to the contrary (combined with the shrewd observation by my colleague Harold Meyerson in his Washington Post column two weeks ago that a younger and more ambitious veep candidate would interfere with the Bush family's dynastic plans for Jeb's ascendancy). Hence, the cornerstone piece of Rovian strategy -- the emphasis on getting as many of the four million evangelicals who didn't vote in 2000 out to the polls as possible (through, by the way, a politicization of the pulpit that recently led even one Southern Baptist official to pronounce himself "appalled" by the tactics).

I know I'm hardly the first person to make this observation. But the important thing here is not how many liberal columnists make the observation. The important thing is that the mainstream media take notice and get the trope into the news columns. Compassionate conservatism had no trouble at all getting onto the front pages in 2000, when many a piece of "news analysis" remarked, with wide-eyed, childlike wonder, on Bush's centrist posture. We're about halfway through this general election campaign, and I sure don't remember seeing many news analysis pieces about the hard-right tenor of this campaign. Rove understands: Give something a reassuring and euphonious name, and journalists will repeat it forever. This year's strategy, we can be sure, will remain unchristened by Rove, who must be chuckling about how easy it all is.

Undoubtedly, Bush will make a feint or two toward the old compassion motif at the GOP convention (if he doesn't do even that, the hard-right strategy will be on unusually naked display). Will those feints be enough for the media to swallow the story line again, after four years of policies like the ones we've witnessed? One important aspect of the right wing's successful attacks against the "liberal media" has been to force the major media to self-censor a finding that is objectively true just because it happens to coincide with a strong liberal point of view. But liberals didn't press this administration's policies or design its reelection strategy. The media's job for the next five months is to describe these things not as Bush and Rove wish them to be portrayed, but as they actually are.

[lovedems]

1. Bush has told African-Americans, GLBT's and those with a terrible

illness to take a hike.

For all of Tucker Carlson's talk about Kerry not picking a minority, he should shut the hell up. Bush has essentially told the people of this country unless you are a CEO or a religious fundamentalist, you don't belong in my party. WTF?

[AndyTiedye]

2. Bush Does Not Need Moderates to Vote For Him. He Has Diebold

and if that's not enough, he'll just call off the elections.