VOTE FOR BUSH
You, Too, Can Be Part of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
by Dan Savage
IMMEDIATELY AFTER John McCain thumped him nearly to death in New Hampshire, George W. Bush swung so far to the right that you would think he was running for President of Chile, circa 1974. Staggering into South Carolina, W.'s first stop was Bob Jones University, a college that bans interracial dating and denounces Catholicism, where he pledged to support the current abortion plank in the Republican platform -- which does not allow for exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or to save a woman's life. W. went on to spend millions of dollars in South Carolina tarring his opponent -- pro-life, pro-gun, pro-campaign-finance-reform candidate John McCain -- as a loopy liberal in the Jane Fonda mode.
To explain away McCain's win in New Hampshire, Christian fundies and other rabid Bush supporters (the Pat Robertsons and Bob Joneses) ran up and down the state claiming that the independents and conservative Democrats voting for McCain weren't evidence of crossover appeal or Reaganesque electability. Nope, they were evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy! Working in concert with the liberal, McCain-lovin' media, Democrats were trying to throw the Republican nomination to McCain. Democrats weren't voting for McCain because of his campaign-finance-reform message or war-hero bio, but because Al Gore would easily defeat McCain in the general election.
"We're not going to let Democrats pick the nominee of the Republican party," a Bush supporter told PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
There was just one problem with this vast-left-wing-conspiracy stuff: It's total crap. Polls show that in a general election, McCain would actually defeat Al Gore, while Gore would defeat Bush. If Republicans were interested in picking a winner, they should have voted for McCain. But just as in '96, the last thing Republicans are interested in is a winner. South Carolina's social conservatives -- Shiite Republicans, as the New York Post's Rod Dreher calls them -- turned out in force on Saturday and voted for Bush, handing Bush a 13-percentage-point victory -- impressive, sure, but not so large as McCain's 19-point win in New Hampshire.
. . .
While Washington state's delegate-lite primary is a national joke, there is one very compelling reason for you to go to the polls on Tuesday: You, too, can be part of the vast left-wing conspiracy.
How? By voting for George W. Bush on Tuesday, February 29. Pay no attention to the blatherings of Bush's supporters: It's Bush, not McCain, who would lose to Al Gore in November. And while only a few delegates will actually be awarded as a result of the primary, the Republican contest is currently about momentum -- who's got it, who's lost it. Do your part to keep the big mo flowing toward George W. Bush by voting on Tuesday.
