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American Traditional Values: Voters Are Election Day's Big Winner
By Kevin Fobbs
November 4, 2004
Last week I called the election when I wrote that the "Ten Percenters" are truly America's unsung heroes because they understand the need to be actively involved in the process, to be fully engaged in fighting for the preservation of our nation's and their families' traditional values. Ten percent of the nation's population made 100 percent of the difference on November 2nd for Faith, Family and Freedom Preservation Day.
President Bush's election night victory actually began in 2002 the Wednesday after the mid-term elections when the GOP made history by picking up seats in the House of Representatives. Ken Mehlman, the president's national Bush/Cheney Campaign Director, convened a national conference call of leaders that afternoon two years ago, and he shared with us a strategy which if we all kept true to it, the president's re-election in 2004 would be assured.
It was a very concise strategy. It was built upon keeping our focus, listening to the hearts and minds of the grassroots and not wavering from the president's philosophy built on faith, freedom, and the American Traditional Values that embody the very character that defines President Bush.
It was going to be hard work, as Ken promised, but if we relied upon all of our individual and collective experience, built a base around those values -- which we knew existed at the inner core -- and were, quite frankly, the necessary building blocks of the fabric of America's historic values, that we would be successful.
Most of us on the call had been involved in political wars for over 20 years and we knew the drill. You would be on call 24/7 and you have to move with the energy and the focus of a well-oiled military machine. This meant, by all counts, your life would become the campaign not just to re-elect the president but would be to assure the nation that the values that have guided our nation's heartland families are the very same values that have strengthened this president in times of crisis, and those values would connect with American voters.
What is absolutely fascinating from a political sense were the naysayers -- and there were a good number of them -- who believed that this president was courting a losing strategy to seek the support of those "wedge issue" voters who were termed to be merely a political distraction as opposed to a growing crucial political base.
The pundits and even some of our learned party leaders in various states, (as well as those arm-chair quarterbacks who came late to the political process but regarded themselves as instant experts) were calling this necessary base of American voters a mere diversionary distraction from the "real issues" and the voters that the seasoned Republican political strategists should be placing their time and energy on.
But each time I spoke to or worked with those "distractions" I would harken back to those fateful words that Ken Mehlman said the day after the 2002 mid-term elections. 'We will win big for the president if we keep our focus, use our seasoned judgment and execute with excellence.' So, in retrospect, the endgame was never to be in doubt because I, like so many others on the call, had been involved with at least four, five, or in some cases six presidential election campaigns. Ignore the true distractions, keep your focus and rely on the wisdom, the skill and the ability that the president would need in the 730 days on the political calendar to secure victory.
Most election campaigns, we knew, would hit peaks and valleys and even seem to be headed downhill after Memorial Day. Other scenarios would produce the appearance that the president's campaign was going to lose its pants after Labor Day. In some cases, the recently historic "October Surprise," which was used successfully against former President Bush in 1992 and unsuccessfully in 2000, would be sprung upon President Bush again in the last week or the last Friday before Election Day.
We knew it, the pundits knew it, and thank God the American voters caught onto it as well and ignored it. The liberals wanted to sap the campaign's spirit as well as our supporters' tendencies to vote for our presidential candidate. They wanted us to stay home on Election Day and ponder if this fourth quarter surprise had any real political legs to it.
Well, we knew better than the pundits, the arm-chair quarterbacks, the new fresh-faced political experts, and even some of our own base because unlike many of them, we knew the president's heart, and we knew his soul.
As the National Bush/Cheney Campaign Chairman Governor Marc Racicot said on my conservative talk show on Election Day, he had worked with President Bush when they were both governors, had built a solid relationship with the president but, more importantly, had gotten to know the very essence of President Bush's leadership, his faith and his spirit. He told my show's listeners that the president's values were solidly based upon our American traditional values.
Governor Racicot expressed that the presidents' values were the most defining ingredient of his DNA, and the American voters would not only sense that, they would understand that this quality was an absolute necessity needed to govern effectively, to lead conservatively with compassion and to be absolutely resolute in the face of terrorists who would try to destroy America.
Well, America responded. The president has a 4 million popular vote lead with over 51 percent of the vote garnered and solidifies his place in history by receiving over 58 million votes -- more votes than even former President Ronald Reagan received in his successful reelection bid in 1984.
To sweeten the pot, the president's win produced coattails as well. The GOP netted pick-ups in House and Senate seats, which gives the president the mandate he, the traditional values voters, and the nation so desperately yearned for.
So guess what? We can tell the United Nations -- with its so-called election day monitors - as well as the French and the Germans, who would rather participate in back-room deals to take United Nations Oil for Food money, that we don't need or value any global permission to protect our nation.
The nation's conviction to stand by our morals, our American Traditions and our American Spirit trumps everything. The nation stood Texas Tall in this election and we say to the terrorists out there you can run but you can't hide. This President has a mandate and now the whole world knows we are going to we are going to defend and protect our nation, our values and preserve our children's future.
Thank God for faith and for the USA!
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is also Second Vice Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit as well as co-founder of the Jackson, MI-based American Conservative Values Television Network. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show at www.wdtkam.com.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
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