This is a long article that will no doubt be referred to throughout the
rest of the campaign. It is titled Without A Doubt, and is written by Ron
Suskind. Here are the first two paragraphs:
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury
official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush
wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov.
3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the
same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between
modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and
religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone
off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's
always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he
thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and
self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for
traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say:
''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the
Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They
can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He
understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
[Homestead] Without A Doubt,
Gene GeRue, 10/18/2004