Through Friday (11/12/04), the Wall Street Journal is hosting an on-line "open house". It is allowing nonsubscribers to its online content to have a free run of the place. Thus, you can read Martin Peretz complete beatdown of the liberals and John Kerry from today's WSJ. Peretz is a liberal hawk, publisher of The New Republic and stood foursquare behind Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Some excerpts:
There was hardly a slice of the population among which Mr. Kerry performed anywhere near expectations. In the end, as David Brooks pointed out on the New York Times op-ed page, Mr. Bush outpolled himself over the four years in 45 out of the 50 states. Neither the Kerry enthusiasm (and the Bush hatred) of Eminem (himself given to vile homophobic and racist ranting) nor of Paris Hilton, of Sean Combs (with his "Vote or Die" campaign) or Whoopi Goldberg amounted to anything except publicity for themselves. And then there was the cinemathug Michael Moore, fabulist and fibster.
But the campaign's reliance on such degrading and frivolous figures actually speaks to what many now believe was John Kerry's Achilles' heel: No one knew for what he really stood . . . But the people did know that he was embarrassed by a certain muscular patriotism, by the historic place of Nature's God in the wider American community, by the simple and unadorned lives that most families live, from which his own new and unimaginably lavish lifestyle sets him apart.
* * *
But the problem is that many Democrats have a downright hostile attitude to the flag, to patriotism itself, which is thought by some in the party to be a retrograde sentiment. And they have, at best, a queasy disposition towards religion. To tell the truth, it gives many of them the creeps. You can't really do much with that, can you?
Personally, I think Peretz's best line is this rhetorical cut at Theresa as he noted "Teresa Heinz's version of Tourette's syndrome (has she ever had an unexpressed thought?). . ."
Read the whole thing and take advantage of the WSJ open house.
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