Ripon College Days

a recent column by Joe Fontaine could have used a good dose of it. It asked readers, "How can an RC student support Bush?" and then proceeded to state that we should oppose him on the grounds that Bush's Administration is "opposed to the very concept" of a liberal arts philosophy.

To us College Republicans, it seems the writer didn't get past the liberal part of the concept he outlined and ignored the philosophical aspect.

The biggest charge leveled at Bush was that "the president, according to reliable, nonpartisan sources, has instituted a 'good news only' policy regarding his briefings in Iraq." Well, a little inquiry online showed that the only mention of this "policy" came from The Nelson Report, a Washington insider journal.

The first problem with Mr. Fontaine's version is that the original text of the report can actually be interpreted several ways, and is not as specific as he implies. One interpretation is that Bush doesn't want to hear pessimistic projections.

This means that he hears all facts, good or bad, but not Chicken Little projections that say the sky is falling in Iraq. And that is if the report is believable in the first place. Is it fair to say this journal is reliable?

Looking back at the July 23, 2004 Nelson Report, it would have us believe that Bush desperately wanted to fire Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld last year. That is not credible in the least, and it does put doubt on the reliability of the source. Is the source nonpartisan? Let's look at the facts: Chris Nelson, the writer of The Nelson Report, was a senior advisor to Democrat Senate Majority Leader Byrd from 1983. That sheds some doubt on whether this report is nonpartisan. So what we find after some minor web-surfing is that "a single, possibly reliable, likely partisan source" could be interpreted in a way that would concern the public. We find it highly unlikely that the president would institute the policy Mr. Fontaine outlined and ask where is the critical thinking?

As for the "incompetent charlatan" remark, one can only smile and hope the president's detractors will continue to "misunderestimate" him. If an incompetent charlatan bested you at every turn, what would that say about you? The fact is that our president is neither incompetent nor a charlatan.

The most accurate portion of the article was the part that praised the rise of the Republican Party into the majority. Unfortunately, Mr. Fontaine's conclusion is an act of denial. He acts as though the Republican majority couldn't possibly have anything to do with, say ...that people are in favor of the Republican policies, and that the Republicans have attractive new ideas.

This is much of why the Republican Party has overtaken the Democrats. But to be fair, we couldn't have risen into the majority without the help of the Democrats, who have supplied nothing but pessimism and hate to their own destruction. One needs only to look to Mr. Fontaine's name calling to get a taste of this.

Mr. Fontaine's denial even extends to the claim that the Republicans are more concerned with votes than, "enriching the lives of Americans." If any party is more concerned with votes than policies, it would have to be the Democrats, not the Republicans.

The Democrats' candidates are constantly shifting their positions to get more votes. John Kerry is a perfect example of this. He had so many opposing positions precisely because he based his positions on what would get more votes at the time and not his own beliefs. Compare that to Bush who, whether you like it or not, has doggedly tried to institute the policies he said he would, and has not waffled because of polls.

The Republican Party is on the rise because our ideas and policies work despite Mr. Fontaine's unsupported claim to the opposite. If as his article says, "upper-class tax cuts do not create jobs," then how exactly does he think jobs are created?

The poor aren't known for hiring people, and the government as a job supplier doesn't work. The dismissal of the death penalty and abstinence, as though they are self-evident failures, shows an absolute absence of every single part of his own definition of a liberal arts philosophy.

These are issues most definitely still being disputed, and to act as though they are proven failures shows either arrogance or ignorance.

Ripon is a better campus because there are both Bush supporters and opponents. Hopefully everybody is equally critical of both positions rather than being blindly ideological. How was that for a competing viewpoint?

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