The party of fear

President Bush will visit Charleston next week, two days after the Democratic presidential primary, to discuss homeland security in a state where the Democrats running for the White House have been attacking him on the stump.  Charleston.net article

And in the history books, he will be the President who campaigned on a platform of fear. What a legacy.

President Bush blew into New Hampshire on Thursday, less than 48 hours after the Democrat competitors left, to try to dig out from the piles of invective that those candidates had heaped on him in a presidential primary that White House officials said Mr. Bush was too busy to notice....[and] touched on the major themes of his re-election campaign: national security, tax cuts, jobs.  NY Times article

Running around after the Democrat primaries. Hysterical.

In New Hampshire, he breezed into a chocolate shop.

"They started their business last year, had a dream, living their dream, and they're making good product," Mr. Bush said in his usual staccato of the shop's owners, Michael and Theresa Anderson. "And I expect people in the national press corps to leave some cash behind."

I guess this is going to be his sub-theme - trying to make the press look like the hard-hearted skinflints. What a sleeze. A hard-hearted one.

Mr. Bush was not as talkative about testimony on Wednesday from David A. Kay, who said that the prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs was wrong, or about Senator John Kerry, who has won the first two states to vote on a Democratic nominee. Mr. Bush ignored questions on both subjects.

In the evening, at a lucrative drop-by in Old Greenwich, Conn., the state of his birth, Mr. Bush raised $1.1 million for his re-election campaign. The checks brought his fund-raising total to more than $130 million, an amount that dwarfs the $40 million raised and mostly spent by the next-biggest fund-raiser of the 2004 campaign, Howard Dean.

I guess, if it comes down to it, his campaign fund could pay for the next terror attack. That would cinch the deal.

The major no-show at the event was Gov. John G. Rowland, a Republican who is enmeshed in a corruption scandal over free renovations to his lakeside cottage. Bush campaign officials did not say whether they had asked Mr. Rowland to stay away.

Lt. Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, said the decision to stay home had been Mr. Rowland's.

"He just wanted to let the president have this evening for himself," Ms. Rell told reporters at the fund-raiser.

Yeah. Sure. When in history has the governor of a state stayed away from a presidential visit to let him have the evening "for himself"?

In Merrimack, Mr. Bush's event consisted of seven people sitting with him on a stage saying cheerful things about how his tax cuts or his stewardship of the economy had improved their lives. The White House said one of the seven, Louise Hickey, a senior executive secretary at Fidelity, had saved $1,100 from Mr. Bush's tax cuts.

"Now, that may not sound like a lot to some of the people who are rolling in cash," Mr. Bush said, to laughter, but adding: "That's a lot. It made a difference."

Oh, hahahahaha. Isn't that just too cute. Funny, funny, funny - the poor people's pathetic lives.

Louise, you silly campaign whore. They're using you to screw the nation. And you're getting $1,100. Which will be taken away from you in health care costs or increased utility costs - or something like.

Mr. Bush recalled his years at Yale as well as members from his class of 1968 who had turned up to see him.

"They were the ones who invented shock and awe when they heard I was president," Mr. Bush said, alluding to his average grades. "They're all fine lads. They themselves were C students."

There's an old standard joke about the horrifying thought that you might be under the knife of a surgeon who only got a C average. And this is funny stuff that your President, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, was a C student?

Paraphrasing Mark Twain: The man who doesn't read has no advantage over the man who can't.