On Google, there are over 8,000 hits for the search phrase,
"Massachusetts Liberal Kerry", many of the hits being large media outlets clucking about how "damaging" the label is. (In fact, the GOP has even widened the slur to the even-more-divisive "
Northeastern Liberal.")
On what planet do self-appointed "patriots" take to referring to America's oldest and most populous area as an insult? New England is the birthplace of America. The great state of Massachusetts and its beautiful Boston were the sites of the Battles of Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord, and of the great Tea Party. Boston is the hometown of Daniel Webster, where Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride, where the very seeds of the American revolution were sown.
This is what Kerry is supposed to be ashamed of?
Since when was The South the more "American" neighborhood? We suffered a war because The South didn't want anything to do with us. But even after the bitterness of the conflict, we succeeded in uniting, and we now stand proudly with the South, where I was born and raised, as a united nation. I'd like to think that most Americans are happy with the arrangement.
Though nothing could be easier than making the case for Bush as the archetypical backyard hick, I have never seen the Kerry campaign try to insult him by using a phrase like "Texas Conservative," and that's because the Democrats aren't brazen enough to make fun of one piece of America to appease another. But the Republicans make a very different choice:
Jane Elmes-Crahall, a professor at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., who studies political rhetoric, calls the term a marketing tool for Republicans in the South and in rural America, including parts of swing states such as Wisconsin and Iowa. "It still signals the antithesis of their social and economic values," she says.
"It obviously rings a bell" among Republicans, former Democratic national chairman Don Fowler says. "And with some few people in the middle, the persuadables, it could have an impact" unless the Kerry campaign fights back.
It wasn't Massachusetts that tried to secede. No, it was there that we stood up, fought, and won this country with blood and sacrifice.
I hope New Englanders remember the way George Bush and the Republicans view them when they go to the polls this November.
(Commondreams.org has more, and it's great...)