Militiaman for Bush say, “Thank you, tyrant. Can I have another?”

Once in a while you hear a Republican speak on why they support President Bush and the seedy underbelly, what must surely be called his “base,” of the GOP is exposed (imagine filthy, gray and brown toes with yellowed, scaly nails waggling in the swampy mist).

As reported in today’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer one Wayne Carter of Pittsburg stops by the Westmoreland Republican shop to pick up a “Sportsman for Bush” yard sign. Now I know that sportsman, hunters and general Republican gun nuts should not be automatically painted with the same defamed brush as the ilk of Terry Nichols, but Carter quickly lays any doubts to rest.

As the reporter probes Carter on the supposed Pittsburg area slide toward the Republican/quasi-facism Party the “sportsman” quickly goes from game enthusiast to the type of hairy-backed, compound dweller that you fear might be building up a mass arsenal in his woodened cabin and typing cryptic books about the second coming and how the aliens that landed in Roswell, NM now run Hollywood with the Jews. On Presidential Candidate, Senator John Kerry, Carter opines, “I think he’d rather fight the terrorists on the streets of Greensburg than Fallujah.” Such a stretch might alarm the rational reader if not for the next wopping statement by Clark, which quickly displays his true political thinking. “I worry he (Kerry) thinks the Second Amendment is about deer hunting. It isn’t. It’s about defending yourself from the tyranny of government,” states Carter (wonder why we need an assault weapons ban).

Carter propones that those who fear a tyrannical government vote for the most tyrannical US President of all time. In turn, the said tyrannical President will seek to pass more laws that abridge our rights (PATRIOT Act), become more secretive in the doings of the government, enforce standing power structures by giving tax breaks to his friends and mega-contracts to his supporters, entrance the populous with blatant appeals to their deepest fears of outside attackers and call all that dissent from his line, “supporters of the enemy. The one thing that he won’t do, is hasten the desires of his gun loving followers, making him, in their eyes, less tyrannical that Kerry. Or, even worse, the gun strokers will notice his growing power, this will justify them arming themselves with the new assault weapons, and their availability itself will justify their support. A government slipping toward tyranny demands that a citizen become better armed. The tyrannical party in government lends its tacit support to a more armed society (the tyrant knows that its supporters tend to be the militaristic segment of the population). Therefore, the gun polishers vote for the tyrant (the tyrant knows that he will always have better guns). Back where I’m from we call this the self-licking ice cream cone (The Bush gang have heard that metaphore before from others in the blogosphere, see Dick Cheney and Haliburton and Rumsfeld).

I could go on to how Carter’s more frightening politics (think militia) are conveniently masked by covert rhetorical device (read “sportsman”) mirror other Republican strategies (ie., “family values,” “states rights”), but, I’d rather share a few more jems I found in the paper from Bush supporters.

One Jean Mitchell displays her deep desire to tune out all bad news about the Bush gang and his draft dodging when she states, “Hearing the speeches of Rudy Giullianni, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Zell Miller sealed my vote, no matter what is said about this administration…People don’t care about 35 years ago.”

Ben Dangerfield, on the other hand does not ignore Bush’s draft dodging, but some how thinks that he gets more “respect” from the troops for it, “…Sen. Kerry is basing his fitness for the job on just four months of duty in the Vietnam War. That is some what a qualification, but then he…joined the anti-war movement…This man does not have, nor will he ever have, the respect of our military.”

Finally, we have Eleanor Morris. Morris confirms my suspicions that brain dribble like American Idol has played a role in shoving our democracy over the cliff. Morris says her support of Bush simply comes down to esthetics when she quips, “You want a president to look healthy…George W. Bush sure does this with his jeans and good ol’ boy cowboy strut…Kerry has the height and a Lincolnesque face, but also wishy-washy stance on important issues (I wonder if she threw in this side note because the report was looking at her like she was a complete idiot).

Just so that I am not accused of letting the Kerry supporters of easy, in the same side by side comparison here is what we find-

Stan Cherim- “President Bush lied to us about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction…with regard to terrorism..(he) is surfing a national wave of fear…future generations are being saddled with a national debt…an unwillingness or inability to admit errors…I will vote for John Kerry, bit with a little bit of control until I see how he does the job.”

Laurie Pollack- “I am not excited about John Kerry. My main reason for supporting him is he is not George W. Bush…He (Bush) has devastated health care and social services…unleashed predatory polices on the environment…has declared an unwinnnable war that has killed more than 1,000…has acted to ensure that gay and lesbian couples are treated as second class citizens.”

Cathrine Colleta- “I’ll vote for John Kerry because…I don’t want a president who feels satisfaction in taking…taxpayer dollars and spending it in a foreign country when so many of us are struggling right here…I want a president who has the confidence to face down big business to save those of us who are working so hard…”

It seems that at a glance that the Democrats are voting on the issues. If a majority of voters do the same that Kerry has a chance, however, he should be concerned that he his done little to inspire string support even among those who plan to support him. Kerry is still getting the “he’s not Bush” vote. In order to really pull ahead, he is going to have to get some positive traction and become his own candidate.

Has my blog died? Just testing...