Dont Get Mad Send Money - Road to the Middle Class

REMEMBER BACK in 2000 when the liberals took out after the NRA? It was spring and the media was swooning over the Million Mom March, a pseudo-grassroots event gussied up by liberal gun-control activists. The Clinton administration was pushing gun-control measures through Congress. Vice-President Al Gore was thinking he would be able to ride gun control to the White House. Liberals thought they finally had the NRA on the run.

But something went wrong. Conservatives didn’t get mad; they sent money. The NRA reported a flood tide of contributions. I remember Googling up the NRA’s site and sending them $100 myself. It’s seared, seared in my brain. And Al Gore decided to run for the people against the powerful instead of running against the NRA.

Then liberals thought they’d take a whack at the Boy Scouts for banning gay scoutmasters. Not surprisingly, the Boy Scouts had developed a policy (after some early scandals) of keeping gays away from Boy Scouts. But the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the Boy Scouts had no right to discriminate against gay scoutmasters. The media was swooning again. But I didn’t get mad. I sent money. I checked out the local Boy Scouts organization and sent them a check. And I’ve been sending them money ever since.

Now we have the presidential election of 2004. For over a year, liberals have been screaming “Bush LIED!!!” Rich international speculators have been pouring millions of dollars into conspiracy outfits like MoveOn.org to run ads against President Bush. Rich Hollywood stars have been pouring millions into the coffers of Democrats and their shadowy 527 organizations. Rich Hollywood A-listers have been riding media publicity to box-office nirvana with conspiracy movies like Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Manchurian Candidate. Minor federal government officials have written books to embarrass the president, and the media has swooned all over them.

But along comes Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with a book called Unfit for Command by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi and a simple story line: Kerry Lied. John Kerry, they said, has been lying about his military service for 35 years. Swift Boat Veterans For Truth bought a half-million dollar TV buy in the battleground states to tell America about it.

The result? Dead silence in the mainstream partisan media. Dead silence from the Kerry Campaign. Frenzy in talk radio. But after two weeks, the juggernaut of talk radio had moved the poll numbers. A CBS News poll reported that support for Kerry among veterans had dropped from 46 percent to 37 percent.

All of a sudden an outraged John Kerry was demanding that the Bush campaign call off its dogs, was filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, and was suing to prevent TV stations from airing the Swift Boat ads. How about that First Amendment!

It makes you think, doesn’t it? Millions in hot money from international speculators, a scurrilous “documentary” hauling in $100 million at the box office, millions in free publicity from the mainstream partisan media and it buys you a tie game in the polls. But two weeks of talk radio and a half-million dollar ad buy and the Bushies are moving the country against you.

No wonder the Democrats and the media are in full outrage mode. Swift Boat vets have been coordinating with the Bush campaign! The major contributor to Swift Boat vets is a big Republican donor! Oh no!

But the timing! The strategery! You’d have to say that the episode has Karl Rove written all over it. At the end of July John Kerry presents himself to the American people as a war hero. By the end of August he is exposed as a faker. They’ll be citing the Swift Boat escapade in Campaign Management 101 for the next generation.

There’s a big lesson here for Democrats and the media—when they have cooled down and are ready to review the whole mess. They don’t do themselves any favors by giving their guys a pass. No Republican could have got away with the contradiction that John Kerry has been permitted: running for election as a war hero after a career as an anti-war activist and a liberal U.S. senator. Imagine a Republican who runs for office on family values and then runs off with one of his aides. He’s not going to get fawning coverage on The Today Show; he’ll get tough questions—unless, of course he runs off with a gay aide.

The same rules ought to apply to Democrats. They need less mothering from the media and more fathering. Fathering. There’s a concept!

No, I’m not mad. I’ll just send money.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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