SEARCHING FOR AMERICA

Ever since the twin Pats, Buchanan and Robertson, stormed the stage in 1992 at the Republican Convention in Huston for the nomination of Bush 41 the Republicans have been looking for the real America. Then, the enemy of real America was the Clintons, Bill and Hillary—the pot-smoking draft dodger and his radical feminist wife who would impose unrestricted abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights and women in combat.

Since then the Republican Party has identified “real Christians”, whether Catholic or Protestant, other religions are considered fringe or frightful and do not live in the real America. Real patriots live in real America and are never critical of war or their leaders and always recite the pledge of allegiance. In the “real America” there is prayer in schools, Christian prayers preferable and textbooks with pictures of dinosaurs and children frolicking in some primordial picnic grove.

In real America parents read to their children, help them with homework, feed them a nutritious breakfast and send them off to a brightly lit school house free from blemish or defect. In real America teachers are paid on merit and teach children only what they need to know to get a job. In real America there are no illicit drugs, no teen age or pre-martial sex and the occasional gunfight is merely a reminder of how good it is to be free of governmental regulation.

In real America everyone is healthy without the intrusion of real doctors and women happily give birth despite rape or incest and remain willing to sacrifice their lives for a moral dictum when a pregnancy goes bad. In real America there are no great cities, no great cultural centers that encourages prostitution and pornography and real America is free from Socialism that is responsible for the degradation of Scandinavia and all of Western Europe.

At last we owe a debt to the Republican Party. The McCain campaign and Sarah Palin are successful; they have found the “real” America in small towns somewhere between the plains of Kansas and Wasilla, Alaska. Perhaps it is that discovery that has prompted elite Georgetown intellectuals in Washington D.C. such as Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks to question the credentials of Sarah Palin and the judgment of John McCain. Perhaps that’s why Christopher Buckley, son of WFB, was driven to endorse Barack Obama. Perhaps that’s why General Colin Powell said he was voting for Obama and that the Republican Party had narrowed.

Despite Sarah Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart had the best line. He said that Osama bin-Laden must really feel like an @&&%*!! now that he knows he killed nearly 3000 people in the “fake” America. Of course, neither the Georgetown intellectuals, the Washington elite nor John Stewart can live in the real America.