Top Down
(To the tune of Streets of Laredo:)
I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy,
You see by my outfit I am a cowboy too.
We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys.
Get yourself a cowboy suit and be a cowboy too!
— The Smothers Brothers
TBogg dredges up this rather remarkable bit of fluff at Redstate.com.
The thrust of this piece is character. Georgie Bush has it; nobody else does. It's impossible to define, but he has it.
The introductory rhetoric is simply silly:
I like George W. Bush. He's a good guy. In a world where most folks wear grey hats or black hats -- he's wearing a white one.
Thereupon follows some corny pseudo- western folksiness:
Out here in the rugged desert, where I live, one develops an ability to judge a man or a woman and their character rather quickly. I can spot a less than sterling character in a few moments. I can tell a genuinely kind woman from a fake smile and countenance at thirty yards.
"Out here in the rugged desert"? "Fake smile and countenance"? Look. I grew up in a teeny- tiny town in western Kansas and lived in Arizona for many years. Nobody talks like that. (Except, possibly, Hollywood screenwriters brought up on Gene Autry movies.) Also, show me somebody who claims to be able to size up somebody at a glance like that and I'll show you somebody who has nothing left to steal. Con men of all persuasions just love that mindset.
This shows one of the main problems with the Republicans' top- down political organization. Their successes are due to their relentless hammering at a common set of points; you do not want to be a dissenter in the Republican party. However, this is not the image they'd like to project -- they'd like to show themselves as being receptive to people's concerns. ("Screw the electorate" attitudes don't win elections.) So you have the problem of trying to appear "folksy" through messages written by political writers who, seemingly, never step outside of their gated communities in Connecticut. As a Republican advocacy site, RedState runs head- on into this. They're trying to be both "grass roots" and "Party talking points" at the same time. I bet if they got off- message, they'd get their noses whapped in short order.
So the message is "character". Of course, after three and a half years in the White House, we might expect some accomplishments to go with all that character. It's impossible to hide the fact that Georgie Bush has been an utter disaster in every area. Hence the "character" business.
Your assignment for today is to find a picture of Georgie Bush on a horse. Extra credit if it's white.
