We've all read the stories.
The reason Bush 'won' was the values he shares with a certain segment of our population.
As w, stated Thursday, "The people made it clear what they wanted."
The key issues for this segment were gay marriage and abortion.
Bush came out and said he's looking to privatize Social Security, limit lawsuits, rewrite the tax codes, and tinker with education some more.
When this happens, his base should be outraged. He occasionally talked about Social Security, tort reform, and tax cuts, but the biggest issues cited by his voters were the social issues.
A stink should be raised if he ignores those issues.
Those of you who live in the red states should write letters to the editor and spread the message: He's ignoring his base.
More in the extended...
(You could do what some letter writers do and pretend your on the other side, or just write it in a way that makes it seem you're one of them).
Spread the message in any way you can that the Republicans NEVER deliver on abortion. They've got this mandate and if they can try to radically change Social Security, or the tax system, they could just as easily try to radically change the Constitution to get gay marriage and abortion banned.
Mention that the straight shootin' Prez never comes out and says he wants to ban abortion-his base's biggest issue. He doesn't care about polls, he's a lame duck, yet he can't bring himself to say it. He talks about judges in a coded way, that's as close as he's gonna get.
If he's unwilling to talk about it, he's unwilling to do it.
(When their Congress proposes yet another amendment on flag burning, point out that they should be doing gay marriage and abortion instead-before they lose the 'mandate'.)
Supposedly many of the social issues voters didn't turn out in 2000. More of them did in 2004. Letting them see the Republicans are just cynically exploiting their values to get economic rewards for the powerful may get more of them to once again avoid the voting booth.
Make sure they know they've been "Left Behind".
Update: Of course, after I write this I see Jonathan Chait wrote much more eloquently about this in the LA Times.