TRUE NORTH by Sonja Eddings Brown: EVERY LAST VOTE

">Link
(I am delighted to introduce the "True North" column, which is a new feature on the Hedgehog Blog. The columns are written by Sonja Eddings Brown, a mother, a media consultant in Los Angeles, and the current Governing Board President of the largest charter high school in the United States. She is also my wife.)


EVERY LAST VOTE


On Tuesday, November 2nd, we need to organize small, committed groups of people everywhere.

We need every American registered to vote, on every corner, of every neighborhood, in every town, behind the wheel of every car on every expressway, in every astonished easy chair sitting before every TV set, to answer the call for George W. Bush. He is not in the middle of a campaign, he is in the middle of an all out war, and it’s not in Iraq.

During the last three and a half years, the President has broken the rules of Washington politics and he has enraged the lions of self-interest. The first thorn in their paws was his winning the presidency in 2000 by hundreds of votes, instead of hundreds of thousands. The Democratic Party has been loading its bullets ever since.

Despite being elected without the mandate of the popular vote, President Bush has been unafraid of political consequences. He has stood on principle. Nothing in the world is more threatening to Washington’s practiced politicians than a man of principle.

Or a man who is unafraid to say that he knows his way to a prayer.

He has stood up to the world community and put America’s interests first, and done so with the passion of a father protecting his own family from predators. He has succeeded in reducing taxes and wrestling a fraction of our paychecks back from the hands of entrenched congressmen who don’t trust us to spend our own money. While fighting terrorists with one hand, he has used the other like a stop sign preventing well-organized special interests from re-defining marriage without a vote. He has drawn a line in the sand against continuing the rare, dangerous and unconscionable practice of partial-birth abortions, stood steady behind proven judicial nominees, and used wisdom in putting government money behind the wishful, but quite unproven embryonic stem cell research.

Almost at every turn, the challenges before the presidency of George W. Bush have been of the most daunting kind. On the home front he steadied an economy that could have gone up in flames along with the World Trade Towers on September 11th. On the world front he stepped fiercely forward and liberated Afghanistan and then acted on the pressing reality that Iraq was also becoming an International House of Pancakes for terrorists. At every turn, despite constant criticism and scrutiny of his every ability, George Bush has risen to the occasion.

Think.

Did you find yourself missing the quivering lower lip of Bill Clinton atop the rubble of the World Trade Towers? Would our troops have felt more supported by the arrival of Al Gore at Thanksgiving Dinner in Baghdad? Would our families have felt safer or our government more resolute with John Kerry addressing a joint session of Congress, promising never to waiver in the face of an attack on America?

We must get out every single, last vote for George Bush.

We must put down our newspapers. Turn off the TV. Get to the telephones. Call our friends. Remind our neighbors across the fence. And we must send a message.

We don’t own our own networks. We don’t have our own shows. We don’t have personal millions with which to create crafty commercials. We can’t control the editorial pages of the elite and stylish big city newspapers, and it’s not likely that we will be invited guests on provocative radio programs.

We’re not cunning, and we don’t use the tactics of unscrupulous political strategists who will win at any cost. Through any means. With any lie. Without a serious thought to the consequences.

But we have the power to vote.

We are the regular folks. The taxpaying, traditional, sometimes silent majority of this country, the ones who get up and carry the water everyday supporting the lifestyle of all those of great wealth and all those who are poor, and on November 2nd, 2004, we are showing up at the polls.

And we will stand with George Bush.