[lbo-talk] Silly liberals! This isn't France!

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Nov 11 13:16:54 PST 2005


[from the reactionary hack PR firm - note Pat Buchanan cri de coeur at end]

CONTACT: To schedule an interview on this topic, call: Special Guests/Christine Dahlson or Jerry McGlothlin, 630-848-0750.

"This isn't France!"

GOP IS NOT IN CRISIS-- LIBERALS ARE IN DENIAL

Author of best-selling kid's book HELP! MOM! THERE ARE LIBERALS UNDER MY BED scoffs at liberals licking their chops over election results and Bush's recent woes. Says concerns by Pat Buchanan are overblown and Americans want more conservatism. Her message to Dems: "Silly liberals! This isn't France!"

What's the difference between liberals and children?

* * * * * * * * * * * Conservatives -- stung by set-backs at the polls on Tuesday, as well as President Bush's sagging popularity numbers and the indictment of a key member of the Administration -- are beginning to panic. Pat Buchanan has already declared that "Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis," a message headlined on the popular Drudge Report today. Meanwhile, liberal Democrats such as Howard Dean are gleeful, predicting a landslide victory in next year's House and Senate elections.

These predictions of a pending conservative melt-down are overblown, according to Katharine DeBrecht, the author of HELP! MOM! THERE ARE LIBERALS UNDER MY BED, the best-selling children's book that features villainous look-alikes of left-wing icons Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy.

"Liberalism is a brain-dead philosophy, and the American people do not believe in it," asserts DeBrecht, whose book has provoked charges of brainwashing and Nazism from liberal critics. "After FDR, our nation tried liberalism for 50 years -- and it didn't work! That's why the Democratic party lost Congress after decades of dominance, why the GOP has won 7 of the last 10 presidential contests, why no self-proclaimed 'liberal' has won the Presidency since 1964, and why twice as many people now self-identify as conservatives as compared to liberals."

Conservatives should not panic over a few bumps in the road, adds DeBrecht, who notes that even Ronald Reagan suffered the loss of Republican control of the Senate in 1986. And while President Bush may need to re-examine his staff and strategies, all signs suggest that the on-going conservative revolution will continue to make progress over the years to come.

"The American people want more conservatism, not less!" argues DeBrecht. "They want to see Washington cut its out-of-control spending and secure our borders, and they don't trust bureaucrats to make decisions for them and their families. The liberals won't do that. All they have to offer is a tired agenda of higher taxes, opposition to family values, hostility toward religion, and a relentless desire to turn more control over to the United Nations. The American people won't go along with that -- this isn't France!"

Liberals have relentlessly attacked DeBrecht for her illustrated HELP! MOM! THERE ARE LIBERALS UNDER MY BED since it was published earlier this fall. Alan Colmes called it "brainwashing," pundit Andrew Sullivan said it invoked images of Mao Tse-Tung, and MSNBC host Ron Reagan said he wanted to publish his own kid's book to demonstrate that conservatives "hate black people." The Democratic Underground website proclaimed DeBrecht a member of their "Top 10 Conservative Idiots" list, and the spokesman for Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly mocked her book, claiming it suffered from poor sales. (The book is currently going to press for a third printing, and it has been ranked as high as #1 on Barnes & Noble's website.)

"Silly liberals!" laughs DeBrecht. "Can you believe that they actually think this country will take a long-run turn to the left? The difference between liberals and children," she adds, "is that most children are eager to learn new things, while liberals never learn!"

*** A profile of author Katharine DeBrecht, a list of suggested questions, and the article "Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis" by Patrick Buchanan are included below for use as show prep. ***

About the Author/Speaker

KATHARINE DEBRECHT is a mother of three. A freelance newspaper reporter who previously worked in Washington, D.C., she is a member of the South Carolina Federation of Republican Women and served as that state's co-captain of "Security Moms for Bush." Ms. DeBrecht graduated cum laude from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, where she studied political science and history. She currently resides with her husband and children in South Carolina.

Suggested Questions for Katharine DeBrecht:

1. Pat Buchanan recently wrote an article titled "Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis." Why do you claim that he is wrong? 2. Recently newspapers from London to Melbourne have been profiling your book, Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed. Tell us what the book is about and what all the fuss is over. 3.Why did you choose this title your book? Are you trying to teach children to hate Democrats? 4. Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy are shown on the front cover trying to steal a piggy bank. Is that intended to turn kids against these Democratic leaders? 5. Do you think your book should be made available in classrooms and libraries? Wouldn’t that be too political? 6. Alan Colmes, the co-host of the top-rated Fox show “Hannity & Colmes,” has called your book “brainwashing.” Do you think that’s fair? 7. A public school in Mass. recently got in the news when a parent was arrested for complaining that his son had to read a pro-gay marriage book in his kindergarten class. What happened here? 8. Blogger and former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan claimed that your book featured a nude illustration of Congressman Barney Frank. What was that all about? 9. What has been the general media reaction to your book?

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10210

Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted Nov 10, 2005

With the rout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and President Bush's free fall in national polls on job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.

Indeed, since 9/11, the party has indulged in a willful self-delusion that it has become America's Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.

This was always hyperbole. Where Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and he was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president.

What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and his embrace of the twin heresies of neoconservatism and Big Government Conservatism, as preached by the resident ideologues at The Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal.

Under Bush I, taxes were raised, funding for HUD and Education exploded, and a quota bill was signed under which small businesses, accused of racial discrimination, were made to prove their innocence, or be punished, in true Soviet fashion.

Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished, and the deficit is soaring back toward 5% of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.

Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first - for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, and the largest wealth transfer of all time with technology, factories, high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.

Working America and the middle class have been sacrificed on the high altar of the Republican Moloch of Free Trade. And how have our Chinese brothers reciprocated our magnanimity?

Both Bushes embraced the "open borders" immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10-15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born California taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in. So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard - on the border of South Korea.

The late editorial editor of the Journal, Robert Bartley, once said, "I believe the nation-state is finished." He and his progeny have surely done their level best to bring that about.

As the country we grew up in becomes unrecognizable, we still hear the Journal, that good and faithful servant of the U.S. Business Roundtable, warning us not to oppose open borders. Meanwhile, our very own Dr. Pangloss, Ben Wattenberg, warbles on about our being the "first universal nation" and, in echo of M. Dominic de Villepin, burbles, "Isn't diversity wonderful!"

In foreign policy, Bush I was an internationalist out to build a "New World Order" after the Cold War. However, post-9/11, Bush II converted to a neoconservatism that calls for unilateral American intervention in the Middle East and the Islamic world, to bring down dictators and establish democracy.

Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us - to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world have been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of Al Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, "Goodbye to all that," and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wildness into which they have led us all.

---

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Death of the West, The Great Betrayal, and A Republic, Not an Empire.



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