What Really Scares The Democrats

I had no idea that George W. Bush was so formidable. There were snipers and machine guns on rooftops around the Fleet Center in Boston, where the Democrats just concluded their national convention. The Massachusetts National Guard was on alert. There were coils of barbed wire and battalions of riot police. Helicopters and probably even fighter planes were flying cover over the city. Why? Well according to Ted Kennedy, “the only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush."

The only thing that America has to fear is another four years of George W. Bush as president? Is that what all that firepower was about – to defend Democrats from George W. Bush?

Well so it would seem. The New York Times did a word count on the speeches given at the convention and one of the least spoken words was “terrorism.”

Truly, this has become the party of Michael Moore. Republicans are expected to denounce their kooks. Democrats embrace theirs. Michael Moore was accorded honors and deference generally reserved for conquering heroes. He has insisted all along that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were no big thing. Only 3000 people died, he argued on CNN’s Larry King Live. According to Moore, America needs to put the attack in perspective. There are, after all, nearly 300 million Americans. The chances of any one of us dying in the next such attack are only slightly greater than winning the lottery.

At least, that’s how Michael Moore sees it. And, it would appear that the Democratic Party has come around to his way of thinking.

If we are to believe recent news stories, Bush is nearly omnipotent. Somehow, it was a Republican dirty trick that John Kerry posed for photographs dressed in a “bunny suit” while on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After the obviously posed pictures appeared on the NASA website and were circulated on the internet, Kerry’s campaign manager cried that the photos were a Republican “dirty trick!”

"This was a leaked photo," complained Mary Beth Cahill. "This was a legitimate tour of a NASA facility, and this photograph came out of absolutely nowhere. We were surprised then. We aren't surprised now," she said.

My goodness, that George W. Bush is a crafty fellow. He tricked the Democratic nominee into putting the bunny suit on, baited him into posing for the camera, then according to NASA, even encouraged the photographer to develop and release the photos quickly. For a guy who’s supposedly dumber than a bag of hammers, that Bush fellow sure has an easy time manipulating Democrats. No wonder the Democrats think that they need surround themselves with barbed wire.

Earlier in this campaign, Bush tricked Kerry into that famous, “I voted for the 87 billion dollars, before I voted against it” line.

So frightened of Bush’s machinations are Democrats that former Secretary of State under ex-president Bill Clinton Madelleine Albright expressed her fear that Bush had already captured Osama bin Laden and was hiding him in a cave someplace, only waiting until just before the election to reveal the capture.

Paranoia has long infected the Kerry campaign. In the very early stages of Kerry’s campaign, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer cracked a very small joke about Kerry’s obsession to gain French approval, noting that Kerry, “looked French.” Kerry, Theresa Heinz-Kerry, and their spokespersons absolutely went ballistic.

But now that I think about it, Democrats have always imagined that the Bush family was orchestrating all sorts of double secret machinations. The Democrats honestly believed that, in 1980, while Jimmy Carter was president, George Bush the elder boarded an SR 71 spy plane and secretly flew to Iran to strike a deal with the mullahs that would keep the hostages imprisoned until after the election.

Keep in mind. These weird conspiracy theories aren’t the fantasies of fringe kooks living in the mountains, standing watch for black helicopters. These theories have been embraced by the Democratic party’s mainstream.

If they really believe this, then it’s not surprising that the hero of Chappaquiddick (another Republican plot, I’m sure) could declare Bush a greater danger than Al Qaida, and not get laughed off the stage.