From NRO, a column by a Los Angeles Police officer makes the following points:

[C]ops and firefighters are inherently conservative in that they understand the importance of following society's rules. Unlike John Kerry, they don't find 'nuance' in every question that confronts them. In their daily duties they see the often-deadly consequences that result when people fail to do what society expects of them. Nearly every call to 9-1-1 is the result of someone concluding that these rules, be they the criminal laws or the fire codes, can be ignored. They did a good job of hiding it last week, but the Democrats are the party of libertinism, the price of which is well known to those who come when people call for help.

Second, cops and firefighters are, if the women in the ranks will forgive the expression, Regular Guys. They drink beer, not wine, and certainly not French wine. They played football and baseball in high school, not lacrosse. Regular Guys think Al Sharpton is a fraud and Michael Moore (who pretends to be a Regular Guy) is a fool, and they think Ted Kennedy is a criminal. Regular Guys do not blame Secret Service agents (who are Regular Guys) for knocking them down on the ski slopes, especially when those agents are there to take bullets for them. And Regular Guys relate to and prefer the company of other Regular Guys; they do not invite people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck to their conventions.

Even with the piles of dough they're sitting on, both George Bush and Dick Cheney still come across as Regular Guys, the kind of men you might find hanging around the fire station or the detective squad room. And with his recent suggestion to Pat Leahy on how he might spend his idle time, the vice president climbed several notches on the Regular Guy scale. John Kerry, on the other hand, owing to his valorous service in Vietnam, might have been a Regular Guy years ago, but he surrendered his membership when he came home to join the Jane Fonda crowd and brand his former comrades as war criminals. And whatever tenuous grip he may have had on Regular Guy status since then was lost when he married his current wife. Old-fashioned notions of chivalry prevent me from offering my full opinion on her here, but Regular Guys do not under any circumstances marry women like Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Posted by: annika at 11:26 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 Regular Guys donÂ’t get 3 Purple Hearts for three bandages placed over three scratches. Regular Guys have to spend weeks in a hospital before they get a Purple Heart.

Posted by: Jake at August 03, 2004 12:09 PM (h4tU8)

2 "Unlike John Kerry, they don't find 'nuance' in every question that confronts them"...I think that the kind of work people do has an immense influence on their political and philosophical beliefs. People who work with things that are "real" and inflexible--farmers, machinists, engineers--don't tend to worship nuance. This *doesn't* mean that they don't understand it. An aeronautical engineer knows well that there is no perfectly good design; that there are "shades of gray" and tradeoffs among many factors....but he also knows that at some point the tradeoffs must be resolved, decisions must be made, and metal must be cut. People who spend their entire lives in a purely verbal environment often fail to recognize this. I think the "lifestyle" factors (beer vs wine, etc) are secondary to this factor.

Posted by: David Foster at August 03, 2004 02:38 PM (XUtCY)

3 I'm a full-time fireman at a fairly large city (250k), and I'm also one of the ones that actually goes into fires. Sadly, my city is one of those liberal stains on the map, and I'd guess a full half of our dept (about 400 FFs) falls into the Kerry column. Unfortunately, of those voting for Kerry, the overwhelming majority of them are just voting lockstep. Most of them are actually conservative, just as Dunphy implies, but at the same time couldn't imagine voting for Bush. It's a sad reality that the union mentality (or lack thereof) has brainwashed these men. If these guys (and their civilian counterparts) could resolve the internal conflict of BEING conservative, but THINKING of themselves as democrats, the GOP would win by a landslide. Every time. Only fear mongering and demagoguery keeps the Kerry (or Gore, in the past) troops in line. As for me, I was a Republican long before I got this job ten years ago, and it never occurred to me to vote the IAFF party line. I even have a "Firefighters for Bush" bumper sticker on my truck. Incidentally, IAFF never inquired as to my party affiliation. Asshats. Incidentally, regular guy that I am, I can appreciate beer AND wine.

Posted by: Andy at August 03, 2004 09:01 PM (bpH79)

4 Heavens. I am certainly not a regular guy, but I think a lot of any man who is willing to marry a strong, opinionated, spunky woman like THK. In terms of a conversation partner, I'd rather be married to her than Laura Bush (based on what I can tell!)

Posted by: Hugo at August 04, 2004 08:55 AM (ntfdi)

5 "Opinionated" is good, but only when the individual has thought seriously and deeply about their opinions...otherwise, it is just blather. Opinionated human beings--male or female--are not rare at all; what is much rarer is the individual who (a)listens to others and (b)thinks seriously and self-critically about their own opinions.

Posted by: David Foster at August 04, 2004 12:44 PM (E+yz/)

6 I'm sure JK can tap into an infinite supply of patience, understanding and nuance just by thinking fondly of 500+ million dollars.

Posted by: Andy at August 05, 2004 06:54 AM (bpH79)

7 Find the whole truth: http://www.regularguysforbush.org http://www.cheesesteakveteransfortruth.org

Posted by: REgular Joe at October 15, 2004 05:58 AM (AaBEz)

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