Capitol Ideas / Bomber Bonior
Bethell, Tom
Bomber Bonior E ver since computers began retrieving phrases from data banks, intriguingly lopsided statistics have emerged from the media morass. In recent years; for example, the phrase...
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...Find out the all- TON" important news the New York Times thinks is unfit to print...
...She said she had sent off a packet of information on Boniorwhich has not yet arrived...
...He struggled with his conscienceand won...
...Unlike the religious right, the religious left does not intrude the supernatural into politics...
...Elected to the House of Representatives in 1976, Bonior will be 50 in June...
...not so much the outlook of atheists as of those who deplore God's handiwork...
...Bonior doesn't like big business, but big labor has been his salvation...
...Washington, D.C...
...It seeks "community" (communalism, commune-ism) and disapproves of inequality so strongly that God Him- or Herself is suspected of having botched the Creation...
...Atheists tend to be more easy-going and laissez Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...In the unpropitious year of 1992, Bush beat Clinton in the district by five percentage points...
...His district is said by the Detroit Free Press to be the "nationally watched ground zero for the original Reagan Democrats...
...T he press never fails to note Bonior's soft-spoken earnestness...
...The world isn't working," he adds, sounding the pure Gnostic note...
...failure to get involved in the former Yugoslavia's civil war: "It's time to use the full weight of U.S...
...The friendships forged on TOWN HALL often lead to relationships of personal, professional or political importance...
...An aide told the Washington Post that he speaks "but three words a day...
...Regrettably, Mr...
...20002 A project of National Review and The Heritage Foundation College Fund...
...The interesting question is whether he will oppose tax cutsa position that would infuriate the workers in his district, who wouldn't mind being allowed to spend more of their own money...
...Early in January the paper worried about his shrillness ("Bonior Barks at the Capitol's New Masters...
...Bonior is often characterized as a principled opponent of abortion, ready to risk the feminist wrath in a pro-abortion party...
...In 1992, the National Right to Life Committee said in a letter to Doug Carl, then running against Bonior: We understand that Mr...
...Carl was outspent five to one, and by Tom Bethell as he sees it Bonior was saved by a lastminute $500,000 PAC-financed media buy...
...When you-are the incumbent and have a lot of money and not strong opposition," Carl said, "you can afford to be the nice guy, but now he's taking on this role as the gut fighter...
...Bonior added: "Let's be honest-we really haven't tried air strikes...
...Nonetheless, an important representative of the religious left today is Rep...
...It's strange: Bonior was flying in (peace-loving) formation with New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in the 1980s-and they are still in formation today: Born-again Hawks of the Left...
...Bonior's pro-life voting record was an abysmal 29...
...His grandmother, an immigrant from the Ukraine, was a suffragette...
...He'd be agitating to overthrow the remaining bastions of liberalism: in the media, television, and universities...
...Now he will be doing his best to block the Republican agenda...
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...The psychological effect on young Bonior was "devastating...
...His unsmiling visage has been seen quite a lot on television recently, criticizing "the rich" in general or Newt Gingrich in particular...
...But he wouldn't be using pamphlets anymore...
...In foreign policy, Bonior gained a reputation as a stem critic of Reagan's antiCommunist initiatives-aid to the Nicaraguan contras in particular...
...It's time to pound the Bosnian Serbs into submission...
...Give him a break...
...In the course of working on this article, at least ten phone calls were made to the minority whip's office...
...By taking an anti-abortion stance," the Chicago Tribune said in 1992, Bonior had balanced his "somewhat liberal" positions with his "more conservative constituents...
...So that's it, then...
...Clearly, the hope in the 1980s was that, freed from "oppressive social structures," the Sandinistas and other socialist regimes would bring forth the New Man-egalitarian, virtuous, industrious...
...On one occasion the press secretary, Gretchen Kline, did come to the phone...
...Specifically, you should be on TOWN HALL-the nation's first interactive computer network for people who are passionate about conservative ideas and politics...
...It may be worth taking a brief look at him...
...in conversation he invokes the names of Walter Reuther and Cesar Chavez...
...With the left-wing actor Ed Asner, he formed a "contra-contra" political action committee...
...The imbalance might lead us to suppose that the "religious left" is an inconspicuous force in American life, the "religious right" a massive presence...
...Exclusive reports and analyses from leading conservatives at HALL The Heritage Foundation, National Review, and other prominent "...the wildly popularidea factories...
...The GOP "represents the wealthy in this country," he says...
...The Washington Post seems to feels the same way...
...faire, in my experience...
...Arm yourself with the latest arguments from the electronic bulletin board on CompuServe- - finest finest minds in conservatism...
...Then one day Bonior teamed that his father had been laid off from his county job...
...He's a Catholic, a former seminarian, a social worker...
...The conspicuously unequal distribution of gifts, talents, and handicaps that we see in the world is a major source of scandal to the religious left...
...David Bonior of Michigan, the minority whip in the House of Representatives...
...We just dropped a few bombs and backed off when it got dangerous...
...We ran an editorial headlined 'Comandante Bonior,' pointing out that he had been giving advice to the Sandinistas...
...For guidance, I turned to the Jesuit magazine America, a major voice of the religious left...
...Bonior's campaign may still be circulating certain NRLC letters supporting him from 1988 or earlier...
...Bray said Bonior is hard to figure-"a grim, tightlipped laconic character who never smiles...
...Get the unexpurgated details of conservative proposals straight from Capitol Hill...
...Reflecting on Bosnia, an editorial in America noted: "Attachment to blood, clan, land and the boundaries of a `pure' ethnic state amounts to the worship of Moloch, whose defense demands the crude materialism of physical conquest and human sacrifice...
...Its message, secular on the surface, is pure (American-style) liberalism, minus the interest-group politics...
...And so it must be leveled out by income redistribution, redressed by affirmative action, corrected by barrier-free access...
...In the Washington Post the comparable figures are 676 and 15...
...One might say that he has done well by doing good-not for the first time in the history of American liberalism, of course...
...Having won the race, he said at a press conference that the vast majority of Democrats were pro-choice, "and I will express that view when asked by people and the press...
...Having attended the University of Iowa on a football scholarship, he became an adoption case-worker, then joined the Air Force, where he stayed stateside for four years (mostly working as a cook, in one account...
...I don't think the new Bonior will wear well...
...He won't speak to us," Tom Bray, the News editorial page editor told me...
...During the 1992 session, just concluded, Mr...
...Guilt is nationalized...
...Alas, one person stopped this from happening (in the left's view): Reagan...
...He would visit schools and he had Smokey the Bear with him showing how to prevent forest fires, even though we don't have any forests in Macomb County...
...His tactics "could turn the second ranking House Democrat into a fiercely despised bit player...
...He would reserve unto himself "the ability to vote my conscience...
...And so should you...
...His foreign policy agenda now looks more like Jane Fonda's than Macomb County's," the Detroit News editorialized in the mid-1980s...
...It has certainly been a more potent force in American life than the media usage suggests...
...Bonior and his comrade-inpeace, George Miller of California, promptly flew down to Managua to plead with the Sandinistas to help them out of their "difficult political situation" at home...
...In fact, Bonior's pro-life position has been inconspicuous since he became minority whip...
...Like President Clinton, Bonior has spent almost all his adult life on the public payroll...
...How about the new Boniorscourge of Newt...
...In 1973 he was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives...
...In 1991, the Washington Post noted his "staunchly anti-abortion position...
...his grandfather, an auto worker...
...Enter now the new Bonior, April 1994, speaking on the House floor about the U.S...
...But during the past two years, on issue after issue, he has voted with the pro-abortion leadership in the House...
...for example, the phrase "religious right" has appeared 750 times in the New York Times, "religious left" 16 times...
...Get TOWN HALL and all of CompuServe's basic GO TOWNHALL...
...No doubt that is precisely the message journalists want to convey...
...Rev up the bombers...
...Once an ice-storm killed trees in Macomb County, and Bonior turned it into a campaign gimmick...
...We are aware that Mr...
...As Bonior put it: Pound them into submission...
...Seriously, how is one to account for this post-Cold War transformation...
...Journalism is itself swamped by preachers of the egalitarian faith, more eager to attack their enemies than praise their friends...
...Join the Battle for Freedom...
...He was prominent in the fight against Nafta, but less accurate in saying at one point that he had the votes to defeat it...
...America suffers from the "original sin" of racial oppression, says Jim Wallis, a left-wing evangelical and the founding editor of Sojourners...
...No one should be misled by these old letters...
...Now, with the vision of the future in tatters, there is a horrible new fear on the left the return of the past: the primordial ethnic state...
...Bonior still says that he is pro-life...
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...His "faith is a priority...
...Someone even advised the Sandinistas to hang tough for a few years, when a new administration might be more sympathetic...
...It's out of character...
...He'd be on the computer...
...Bonior comes from "the classic mold of Catholic liberalism," the Detroit Free Press writes...
...The late Mitch Snyder, who used the homeless as a battering ram in his campaign against America, was a true (although extreme) leader of the religious left...
...Paine wouldn't stop at capturing Congress, though...
...Only the Tools Have Changed TOWN HALL, n private forum ou ConipuSerz'c, molt: • All the news-uncut, with instant access to stories the liberal media ignore...
...The religious left is, to a considerable extent, the reigning liberal heterodoxy...
...Paine understood the power of ideas to change society...
...At one point, Sandinista president Daniel Ortega embarrassed his allies on Capital Hill by flying off to Moscow for consultations...
...Laid off from a county job...
...Bonior impressed colleagues with his earnestness, his personal austerity, then truly amazed them by predicting the exact vote (160) he would receive in his whip contest against Steny Hoyer of Maryland...
...Such class warfare has done wonders for his campaign finances...
...Bonior's voting record has deteriorated drastically since he ran for and was elected to the #3 House Leadership position in July 1991...
...J n the political arena, members of the religious left are rarely identified...
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...Today, with his whip's salary of $148,400 a year and a solid haul of union dues flowing into his re-election coffers, he doesn't have to worry about money in the way that the average blue-collar worker in Macomb County does...
...His position now is best characterized as "personally opposed," which is how the Detroit Free Press recently put it...
...The CIA recorded the sessions, but couldn't be persuaded to release the tapes...
...Unlimited connect time for only $16 a month plus CompuServe's Already have a CompuServe ID...
...and NATO war planes in Bosnia," he said...
...This bitter preoccupation with inequality, and antagonism toward the productive that accompanies it, is more a religious than a secular obsession...
...O 18 The American Spectator March 1995...
...Every time there was an election," Doug Carl told me, "you would see him on TV back here in Michigan passing out these seedlings...
...A series of unexpected leadership tumbles, in part engineered by Newt Gingrich, cleared the path for Bonior's rise in the U.S...
...nnrroncl jorJmnr, art...
...The religious left has paraded through history in the garb of heresy-Gnostics, Manicheans, Cathars, Albigensians...
...His father ran a one-man print shop, held a county job, and was elected mayor of East Detroit...
...T he delightful resurgence of conservatives in Congress would have come as no surprise to Thomas Paine...
...1994 • Winning ideas and strategies from like-minded conservatives around the country...
...To add insult to injury, in several cases he has offered contrived explanations that misrepresent the effect and purpose of the pro-life policies that he has voted to overturn...
...But as David Frum has pointed out, the religious right has lost every battle it has waged in recent years...
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...The speech was described by the Detroit News as "brimming with angry rhetoric...
...r-% 0 kay, so he's a peace-loving for mer seminarian...
...Congress...
...On defense he has earned a zero rating from the National Security Index...
...An aide to a leading House GOP opponent of abortion told me that Bonior lobbies pro-life Democrats to vote the "choice" position...
...Unlike many liberal Democrats, Bonior opposes abortion," Gannett News reported...
...Lewis has called for the pounding of the Bosnian Serbs so many times that some are beginning to think of him as Bomber Lewis...
...In the same year, a conservative evangelical, state senator Doug Carl, did well against Bonior, holding him to 53 percent of the vote...
...Jim Wright and Tony Coelho fell, and then Bill Gray unexpectedly resigned to head the United Negro 16 The American Spectator March 1995 In the Fight for Freedom...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 3
