When Bush speaks in code

[emad]

When Bush speaks in code

Wednesday, October 19, 2005



WHEN President Bush says of White House counsel Harriet Miers, "I know her heart," those words may not be of much guidance to most Americans trying to assess her fitness to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Bush has long had a way of speaking in code to what appears to be the main target of this and many other public comments that seem insufficient or even mystifying to others. Bush has mastered the art of effectively signaling to religious conservatives, his bedrock base of supporters, "Trust me. I'm one of you."

By some accounts, the origins of Bush's practice of using code to reach out to Christian fundamentalists were his consultations with family adviser Doug Wead, who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to sprinkle more references to God in his speeches and to schedule high-profile meetings with leading evangelicals in the 1988 presidential campaign. The elder Bush, an Episcopalian, was said to be uneasy about wearing his religion on his sleeve.

George W. Bush had no such reticence about outreach to Christian conservatives. As a candidate for governor of Texas, his speeches were laced with declarations of his relationship with Jesus Christ. Meeting with Christian supporters on the first day of his second term, Bush reportedly said, "I believe that God wants me to be president."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/19/EDGU1F9VSV1.DTL

[Inland]

1. RW Christians let Bush speak in code because they know their

positions are minority and to some extent, Bush has to be duplicitous to get the right wing agenda through.

They always knew Bush was lying to somebody.

Now it occurs to them...Bush might be lying to us.

It's not much of a revelation, that a president who would lie to most of the country for political advantage would lie to them as well. It's finally here, after six years, that they can't trust Bush just because he gives them private and veiled assurances and says he's a christian.

The code isn't enough for the RWC any more.

[emad]

2. For 'code' read 'forked tongue'.

?

[smomfr]

3. In his last quote above......

delete God and insert the devil.

[kenny blankenship]

4. religous RADICALS not conservatives

these folk may be all for traditional roles for women and a return to pervasive censorship of the culture, but that does not make them CONSERVATIVE.

They are radicals in proposing to place religion before and above democracy and individual liberty--OK? In fact quite a few are even advocates of a revolution in the mold of Islamic revolutionary movements seen in Iran and elsewhere.

[Kolesar]

5. There's that "Freedom" bullshit

As Professor Bruce Lincoln observed, the president who spoke of freedom as "the Almighty's gift to every man and woman" was casting his presidency "not just as a struggle for freedom, but a religious mission with risks of martyrdom."

To me, Freedom means that the government is not going to enforce moral restrictions on drinking, dancing, gambling, drug use, promiscuity, adultery, etc. unless such behavior has a deleterious effect on other members of society. To the RW religious whackos, it somehow means the opposite. Pisses me off.