Last week, Nat Hentoff (you know, the music critic?) wrote about the growing conservative-libertarian opposition to Ashcroft's agenda.
This on the heels of O'Reilly's apology for accepting President Bush's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.: "I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this."
And now Andrew Sullivan has declared: "The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land."
Is the big tent getting smaller?
While not trying to elevate myself to the lofty plane shared by Bill O'Reilly, Andrew Sullivan or the author of "Remembering Bix", I fancy myself a bit of a political moderate/libertarian.
Moreover, a very modest claim to fame that I hold is that I have always voted for the Presidential candidate that receives the most votes in the general election. (I used to be able to say "I have always voted for the winner," but Bush v. Gore broke that record). In other words, instead of being loyal to a particular party, I am one of those "swing" votes that has actually voted for both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates.
Well, I can say with some vehemence that I cannot imagine any plausible scenario in which I would vote for Bush in 2004.
Obviously I don't speak for or represent a sample of all swing voters by a long shot. Maybe not even many of them. But I suspect that if someone like me, who has actually voted Republican, has been pushed so firmly to the left by the last four years that Bush I don't even consider him a a plausible choice, the Bush administration has more to fear than they suspect.
At least I hope so.
Comment #1 :: link :: February 25, 2004 6:28 PMO'Reilly's apology was a completely lame one. He had promised not to trust the Wadministration any more if there were no WMD. He then said something far weaker than that and ... blamed the whole affair on the CIA. How did he know the CIA was to blame? The wadministration said so. Hadn't he just promised not to trust them any more ....
Comment #2 :: link :: March 4, 2004 9:16 PM
