Pat Buchanan makes news with his endorsement for president. He is scathing in his condemnation of the Iraq war and of the neo-conservatives surrounding Bush, but he is completely contemptuous of John Kerry. Some excerpts:
... in the contest between Bush and Kerry, I am compelled to endorse the president of the United States. Why? Because, while Bush and Kerry are both wrong on Iraq, Sharon, NAFTA, the WTO, open borders, affirmative action, amnesty, free trade, foreign aid, and Big Government, Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing.
The only compelling argument for endorsing Kerry is to punish Bush for Iraq. But why should Kerry be rewarded? He voted to hand Bush a blank check for war. Though he calls Iraq a "colossal" error, "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he has said he would - even had he known Saddam had no role in 9/11 and no WMD - vote the same way today. This is the Richard Perle position.
Assuredly, a president who plunged us into an unnecessary and ruinous war must be held accountable. And if Bush loses, Iraq will have been his undoing. But a vote for Kerry is more than just a vote to punish Bush. It is a vote to punish America.
There is a final reason I support George W. Bush. A presidential election is a Hatfield-McCoy thing, a tribal affair. No matter the quarrels inside the family, when the shooting starts, you come home to your own. When the Redcoats approached New Orleans to sunder the Union and Jackson was stacking cotton bales and calling for help from any quarter, the pirate Lafitte wrote to the governor of Louisiana to ask permission to fight alongside his old countrymen. "The Black Sheep wants to come home," Lafitte pleaded.
It's time to come home.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. It really is an outstanding precis of the conservative case against the Bush administration and even more against John Kerry.
If the Democrats lose it'll be largely because no one has a reason to vote for John Kerry. He's a perfect denotation of the term "empty suit". The majority of voters who pull the lever for Kerry wish only to vote against George Bush. Pat Buchanan is the most prominent example of this phenomenon on the other side of the ballot that we've seen emerge thus far.
