Well, now that I've offered, I guess I'd better do it, huh? Hopefully this will make sense, and please keep in mind that a lot of this does not reflect my personal opinion; I'm trying to be thorough in answering the question.

First and foremost are the moral values that were mentioned in the exit polls. A lot of my flist were very upset by this; they felt that moral values were less important than economic issues and the war in Iraq. What they didn't see is that for a lot of people, there is a connection. Character counts; it's why there is still so much lingering resentment over the Clintons, and why Bush has their support. They see W as a man of character, who will stand up and do what he feels is right, and will not change his decisions according to opinion polls. Even if his decision is not right, and a lot of the right wing think he's made some boneheaded decisions, he'll own it and follow through. He is seeing as being "folks like us", a normal man who is caught up in politics, and thus he is trusted to make decisions as a normal man would, according to his values. That his values are overwhelmingly shared by the populace just adds more to this trust.

This ties in hugely with 9/11. When people on the left and in the media say that we deserved it because of our arrogant foreign policies, this makes a lot of people very, very angry, and this one does include me in it wholeheartedly. None of those 3,000 people did anything other than get up in the morning and go about their lives. We were attacked on our soil simply for being prosperous and not sharing the religious and ethical values of people whom we offend simply by existing. This is not a just retribution. We are not evil simply because we have Big Macs and let women wear miniskirts. There is /nothing/ in our recent past that we did to deserve such an attack. There is no moral equivalent to the massacre of innocents.

Working from that perspective, the question then becomes how to respond and where. Keep in mind that the WTC had been bombed before, and Clinton's response of targeting individuals for arrest was seen as ineffectual at best; several years later, there were convictions on several conspirators but none for the actual bombing, and at least one man had simply been deported back to the Middle East to work on bombing us again. Meanwhile there were reports all over newspapers, magazines and television that there were training camps for terrorists all over the Middle East including in Iraq, a country we were still technically at war with.

The first Gulf War had ended in a cease-fire, which was constantly being violated. Our troops bore the bulk of the UN peacekeeping mission, which included getting shot at whenever Hussein felt like it. Our boys were over there, but for no result. Sanctions had been being conducted for over a decade and Saddam continued to thumb his nose at them, and at the UN... Which, considering he was making money hand over fist with the ultra-corrupt "Oil for Food" program is probably not all that surprising (more on this in a minute). The games he was playing with not letting inspectors in, then limiting where they could go, then insisting they had to have "observers" with them at all times and never go anywhere without permission certainly gave the impression that he had quite a lot to hide - there were very few people who didn't see those actions and didn't think that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Thus it was that a lot of us actively cheered when we went into the Middle East, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. The war had been forced upon us and, rather than sit back and wait to be attacked again, we moved so that we could fight on our terms, with soldiers who voluntarily get paid to risk their lives, not with people who were going to work or Disneyland. We did our best to make sure civilian casualties were kept low - and continue to do so, even in the face of an enemy who thinks nothing of using his own children as shields and living bombs - and helped two countries move away from the stone age. We've allowed both countries their own choices about how to rule themselves, provided food and health care, built schools, and otherwise improved the lives of millions of people who were trapped by totalitarian regimes - and also reduced the risk of future shelter and aid for terrorists in those countries.

A lot of people on the left disagree and claim that we have in fact inflamed the terrorists to even greater levels of hatred, and that another 9/11 is inevitable and deserved. This is, of course, an opinion and thus they are entitled to it. It is not, however, a fact, and it is not an opinion that is shared by people on the right. On a personal level, I was always stronger and tougher than most of my classmates. If I gave ground and worked to appease them and minimize my physical intimidation, I got picked on. When I knocked some heads together, I stopped getting bullied. Thus it makes sense to me that things would work that way on an international level as well.

Speaking of international, though, we come to the issue of the UN and its relative importance in our decision making process. Again this is an area where perception and opinion are drastically different on the two sides of the political spectrum. On the right, the UN is viewed with immense distrust. A lot of people, if asked what the UN does, will respond with "Bitch about Israel and abuse diplomatic immunity." It is hard bordering on impossible for a lot of people to see why we should subsume our national interests in favor of bowing to the opinions of an international community that is so patently after their own agenda. That the main objectors to our going into Iraq also just happen to be the people who were profiting hugely from the status quo further eroded any confidence or trust in the UN as a governing body. I won't go into all of the details here, but in essence, due to the sanctions, Iraq was only able to sell oil through middlemen. The middlemen paid money that was supposed to go to feed the Iraqi people directly to Saddam and then sold the oil for a markup. The UN itself got paid a commission for every barrel sold and it was up to Saddam to decide who he sold to and what the money got spent on. If you want to read in more detail, this article lays it out: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1

This was not widely reported on the mainstream media, which brings us to another point that is pretty darn huge with the right: media bias. From what I've seen of the left, a lot of people believe that it does not exist, outside of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and other conservative-friendly outlets. This gets those of us that see Peter Jennings sneering at the president for not being available immediately after the WTC bombing as objectionable, to take one obvious example, hopping mad. There's a fairly comprehensive look at the phenomenon here: http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/welcome.asp

Related to that is the issue of feeling like the left is out of touch and arrogant. We see articles like this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/opinion/03kris.html and feel condescended to. Having their faith mocked really bothers a lot of people, and there's a very vocal segment of the left that feels that it is perfectly acceptable to declare that Christians are all, by definition, crackpots who have no business being involved in government. If you try to argue, then the slurs come out; homophobe, Jesus freak, fascist... The list goes on. Rather than stand up and be publicly pilloried, most people choose instead to remain quiet and simply vote.

This was a lot of the motivation in this election, in my opinion. There was an awful lot of hatred for Bush that was shown on the mainstream media and in bumper stickers across the nation. A lot of people really lost focus, concentrating on their virulent hatred rather than on anything positive for their own candidate. Yes, the Republicans certainly had their share of negativity, but for sheer irrational hatred, the feeling of the left towards Bush couldn't be matched. It had gone on throughout all of his first term, but towards election day, as it started to sink in that people weren't flocking to the banner of "anyone but Shrub!", it started to border on hysteria. There was no arguing with it, because if you even tried, you'd get a blast of personal attacks on /you/ - because obviously the only people who would support a chimp dictator like Dubya were illiterate rednecks who only cared about beer and stock car racing. That attitude backfired, because instead of being intimidated, it made people resolved to go out and vote /for/ Bush.

Last I'm coming around to social issues and the economy. It's easy to believe, if you listen to the mainstream media, that the economy is shot to hell and it's all Bush's fault. However, the economy just does not move that fast. A lot of the economic problems in any presidency are a holdover from the previous four years, for one thing, and for another, if you look at the actual numbers, W's presidency is ending with a rosier economy than did either of Clinton's terms, when the economy was being touted as wonderful. Again here you come to an ideological divide, and the NYTimes article I mentioned earlier focuses on this - how can poor people believe in tax cuts? Well, because a lot of poor people believe in the forces of capitalism and would like to someday not be poor. Plus, if you look at the financial data, "the rich" who pay taxes? Start out with people making $26,000 a year. Also, people who inherited their money pay very little tax, as taxes are based on income, and certain forms of dividend income are tax-free. People who are actively earning are the ones who pay the taxes, and the way the burden is divided is disproportionate; 50% of the people in this country pay 96% of the taxes. You simply can't give a tax break only to the poor because they're already not paying any taxes.

As for social issues - God, guns, and gays as I've seen them referred to - we return once again to where we started, with moral values. The vast majority of Christians do not want to force other people to become Christian, but a lot of them have a problem seeing why morality should not be enforced. Particularly on the issue of abortion, which is considered murder and thus abhorrent, there is a great difficulty coming to a compromise because neither side is willing to give an inch. Guns are a basic right in this country as well as being tied to a lot of heritage for people who grew up in rural areas where hunting is popular. As for gays, a lot of that issue is simply that they have no frame of reference. The percentage of homosexuals in society at large is disputed, but the two extremes seem to be 1% and 10%, with the real answer lying somewhere in between. For a lot of people in red states, they've never knowingly met a homosexual, which means their impression of gays hinges entirely on what they see in movies and television - not the best representation. Add to that the fact that many consider same-sex partnerships immoral and then the rapidness with which the issue of gay marriage was forced onto center stage and you have a lot of very uncomfortable people being forced towards change. Keep in mind, also, that the gay rights movement is a very recent one, historically speaking. It was only in 1973 that homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental illnesses, 1980 before it was actually dropped from their diagnostic guide, and only since 1992 that it was removed from the World Health Organization's equivalent. It was only last year that the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws were unconstitutional, thus removing the last 13 states wherein actually engaging in homosexuality was a criminal act. That's not an awfully long time for a large segment of the population to get used to a radical change in outlook.

None of what I said is intended to change your mind; you're an intelligent person and can form your own opinions. I hope, however, that it gives a bit of insight as to where the other half of the population is coming from.

--Sharlene