Bushwhackers

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on our part, but from where we sit it looks as if George W. Bush may succeed in energizing and uniting liberals in a way that hasn’t been seen for a long, long time.

At least that is the impression we came away with after checking out a rally held last week outside the former Herman Keifer Hospital on Detroit’s west side.

By our estimate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 people gathered to protest Bush’s proposed tax plan. Union members, senior citizens and African-Americans all turned out in force to send the message that they would not quietly accept a tax policy that will further enrich the very wealthy at the expense of the working class and the poor.

Our question is: Did people not believe Al Gore during the debates when he warned that Bush wanted to give 40 percent of his trillion-dollar tax cut to the top 1 percent of this country’s richest people? Now reality is coming home to roost. And all of us will be paying a severe price in the form of cutbacks to everything from environmental protection to public transit to health care. The only solace is that what’s coming will be so terribly regressive a backlash has to occur. There’s nothing like a well-defined common enemy to bring people together. In that regard, Bush is the man.

“Republicans have as much concern for working families as Col. Sanders has for chickens,” Rep. David Bonior (D-Mt. Clemens) told the cheering crowd. “I’m tired of getting cooked.”