Presidential election leaves varied responses
Jon Heit
George W. Bush won majority votes in both the popular and electoral votes. What does this mean? Well, aside from the obvious second term, the uncontested election means that George W. Bush can claim he has a mandate from the people of the United States.
The irony is that the Republican president's mandate isn't Republican. The actions of Bush over the last four years cast aside some of the major principles of GOP philosophy.
A major tenet of the Republican party is fiscal responsibility. After Lyndon B. Johnson, President Bush has spent more federal money than any president in U.S. history. And the age old Republican concern for limiting the federal government? Bush expanded the federal government and increased its spending by 30 percent over four years.
And what about prioritizing states' rights? Not meddling with the Constitution? The president was a champion of those Republican values when he proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He didn't want states to make the decision about whether gay marriage should be allowed. He wanted to stop those activist judges who were interpreting their state constitutions.
An amendment controlling marriage seems hardly indicative of the Republican desire to limit the federal government's control of our personal lives. Maybe it was the Patriot Act or rhetoric implying we should overturn Roe v. Wade that was supposed to keep the government at bay.
How does all this play out in the next four years? I think it means we'll see a more robust neo-conservative agenda coming from the White House. Energized by his new mandate, the president will continue to enforce his neo-conservative agenda hidden under the guise of the Republican party.
Mike Pellicio
Well, Bush won by three million votes. The GOP picked up three Senate seats, increasing their majority. The Republicans' lead in the House is now nearly 30 seats. It appears our nation is finally united. In this election, our country has sent a clear message.
Bush is the first president to gain an outright majority of the vote since his father. If there was ever a time for our country to unite, it is now. Aside from the occasional childish "Bush-hater," who now has a lack of ammo (given his clear majority), we should see people getting behind a president for the first time in a while.
Why exactly did Bush win? The exit "polls" all predicted Kerry to win in every single swing state. As it happened, Bush won Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and (probably) Iowa and New Mexico.
Why did Bush win the election? The American people decided that the promotion of "moral values" was a very important deciding factor. Bush was always going to win the "moral values" vote given Kerry's pathological and often trivial lying and un-American exploits in his past.
Now, the pressure is on the Democrats and the media. If they don't clean up their act, the country is still going to be divided. If we want our international reputation to improve, we need to get behind our president. This applies particularly to the media.
In weeks leading up to this election, the president's news stories and headlines were absolutely awful. I never saw a positive story on TV, unless it was discrediting a negative one. When the media trashes the president, not only do Americans read it, the rest of the world does too. That's why the rest of the world hates us, and has hated us for a long time. This needs to stop.
Now that we've re-elected a strong president, the next step is to re-establish strong unity.
Michael Maxwell
After one of the closest "legitimate" elections of our generation, George W. Bush has emerged the winner out of the insanity that is our American electoral system. And I can honestly say one thing: I don't understand.
I don't understand how, only when the race for the White House is so close, we get record turnouts at the polls. I'm really not sure what is worse about this election -- that people don't care about propositions and measures on the ballot when it's not a close election, or that they most likely will vote with as much knowledge as a parsnip in a close presidential election.
I don't understand why the youth of America aren't voting like they should be. Landline telephone polls showed Bush with a slight edge over Kerry in every state, but when cell-phone polls were taken (representing the 18-26 demographic), Kerry demolished Bush every time. Obviously, we aren't voting. Even old folks that can barely walk are voting -- we have no excuse.
I don't understand the lack of accountability in the White House. For our country to re-elect a commander-in-chief that is sending our friends, neighbors, and loved ones into a deadly war that has taken our focus away from the true threats in the world -- Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea, to name a few -- is beyond my comprehension.
And I don't understand why Republicans, when asked how they could re-elect Bush after he has constantly and consistently stumbled and fallen in Iraq, answer, "yeah, I agree. But besides that, he's doing good." I think those Republicans would think a little differently if they took their partisan blindfolds off.
* Ã Ã Jon Heit, Michael Maxwell, and Michael Pellicio each have a column that appears once a month.