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Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 The
Bush Landside That Wasn't
Culture matters...
[Cliff Kincaid] 11/5/04
It’s hard to argue with success, but the election results
indicate that if President Bush and the Republicans had taken
a tougher line against the moral pollution of our culture, they
would have won by an even larger margin. The passage of anti-homosexual
marriage amendments in 11 states—by margins as high as
86 percent and no lower than 57 percent—demonstrates the
conservative cultural trend that is now dominant throughout the
country. Yet Bush, who opposes homosexual marriage, only captured
51 percent of the national vote.
The lesson
is that if Bush had pushed harder against cultural pollution—and the media that contribute to cultural collapse—he
could have taken away some of Kerry’s blue states. Michigan
and Oregon, which voted for Kerry, passed the anti-homosexual
measures by margins of 59 percent and 57 percent respectively.
Kerry is pro-homosexual rights and was against the marriage amendments.
The conventional wisdom is that Bush won because the Republican
machine got more cultural conservatives and Christians to the
polls. But those same results also suggest that Bush may not
have done enough to highlight the moral and cultural differences
between Kerry and himself. On the campaign trail, Bush highlighted
in general terms his stand for family values, and during one
debate he explained his support for a constitutional amendment
protecting traditional marriage between a man and a woman. But
he did not go out of his way to express support or campaign for
those ballot measures.
Bush’s 51 percent margin—versus the much higher
percentages in favor of the anti-homosexual measures—can
possibly be explained by the belief that some voters may have
voted for the anti-homosexual measure on the state level and
against the President on other issues, such as the economy or
the war. But the cultural conservative trend was so strong—having
been cited above the economy and Iraq as a priority issue in
exit polls—that it’s also reasonable to suggest that
if Bush himself had pressed harder on the values front, he could
have brought more voters over to his side and racked up a much
larger margin of victory. It could have been a landslide.
The Washington Times notes that the election results are a setback
for people like billionaire George Soros, who spent about $24
million to defeat Bush. Soros, who made an issue out of Iraq,
has an agenda that includes drug legalization, homosexual and
abortion rights, more restrictions on gun rights, and euthanasia.
A major funder of the ACLU, Soros operates a financial hedge
fund and an international network of companies and foundations
that make Halliburton look penny ante.
All of this
is anathema to cultural conservatives. Yet neither Bush nor
Cheney ever
publicly named Soros as a Kerry backer in
an effort to draw attention to what was at stake in the election.
All Bush did in this regard was to mention Hollywood’s
support for Kerry during one of the debates. Kerry himself had
described Hollywood as the “heart and soul” of America
after disgusting and profane performances by Hollywood celebrities
at a Kerry fundraiser. The videotape of the event was never released
publicly by the Kerry campaign.
Bush could
also have mentioned that Hugh and Christie Hefner, the father-daughter
team that runs Playboy, had contributed financially
to Kerry’s presidential campaign and several Democrats
running for office in 2004. They included Senate candidates Barack
Obama in Illinois and Patty Murray in Washington, both of whom
won. Christie Hefner also contributed to America Coming Together,
the Soros-supported get-out-the-vote group. Another pornographer,
Larry Flynt of Hustler, gave $1,000 to the Democratic National
Committee in July. In Federal Election Commission records, of
course, he is listed simply as a “publisher” from
Los Angeles.
Can you imagine what might have happened if the Bush campaign
had highlighted financial support for Kerry and the Democrats
from the Hefners and Larry Flynt? Or if the role of ACLU ally
George Soros in virtually taking over the Democratic Party had
been highlighted in a national Bush campaign ad? It was a huge
missed opportunity.
The Bush
campaign may have been reluctant because such an attack would
have generated
even more of a media backlash against Bush
than was already evident. The media demonstrated their alliance
with the Hollywood liberals when demands for release of that
videotape of the Kerry fundraiser were met with silence. This
was another issue that was ripe for exploitation by a Bush campaign
that seemed, in the final analysis, just too timid in confronting
the cultural polluters. The campaign said just enough, however,
to win. Now is the time for rhetoric to be followed by action.
The media will scream, but they—like Kerry—lost the
election. CRO
copyright
2004 Accuracy in Media
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