Basic HTML Version
PAGE 6
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 9, 1984
American people. Conservative Democrat author Ben Wattenberg explained
this phenomenon very clearly in the November 8 LOS ANGELES TIMES, in an
article entitled "Mugged, But Still Clutching Their
'Issues'":
The Democratic presidential disaster brings to mind a harsh,
apocryphal but relevant story. A liberal clergyman in a big city
was mugged. He had always believed that there were no bad boys,
only bad societies. He sermonized against any hint of police
brutality. He favored civilian police-review boards. He said
that "law and order" was code for racism.
As chance would have it, the clergyman was scheduled to speak to
a group of elderly citizens a few days after he was mugged. He
searched his soul to find meaning in his traumatic experience.
When he mounted the podium to address the elderly crowd, he said
roughly this: "I have gone through a great personal trauma. I
have thought again about my views on crime.
And despite the
harsh and ugly act of violence unleashed upon me, I still believe
in my liberal principles." There was dead silence in the hall.
Then an old lady in the rear cleared her throat and rumbled "Mug
him again."
The Democratic party got mugged Tuesday..•• Like the mugged lib
eral clergyman, the Democrats are thinking things over. Already
we can hear the response from some Democrats from the left side
of the spectrum. It was, they say, a personal victory for Ronald
Reagan. He's so amiable. Walter Mondale wasn't a good candi
date, they tell us. Young people are too selfish these days,
that's what did it.
It was Geraldine Ferraro's finances that
tripped us up. Reagan tricked us; he never came up with a plan.
They outspent us; it was unfair.
Accidents, tricks, personal
popularity--everything but substance.
Strange. This is the message now brought to us by the folks on
the far-out left who earlier told us that it was substance that
was in the saddle. They said that the nuclear-freeze movement
would freeze Reagan. They said that the gender gap would sink
the sexists. They
said
that a tidal wave of black registration
would establish the agenda of the Rainbow Coalition and carry the
South. They said that Central America was another Vietnam....
These are the folks who believe that the Civil Rights Commission
must be the exclusive province of the quotamongers.... They had
no problems with establishing homosexual quotas in the Democratic
National Committee. After all, they apparently believe, Demo
crats can always get the votes of people concerned with tradi
tional values by waving plastic flags at the national convention.
Now the left tells us that it was only because of an accident of
personalism that it lost. It incants its� slogan: The People
Really Agreed With Us .2!! the Issues. There is just enough � r� th
in that for it to be thoroughly deceptive. In national pol1t1cs
"issues" are subservient to "principles," and the voters sup
ported Reagan's principles: strength, traditional values, merit
and init i ati ve••••