The Republicans Saddle Up

Soon after 9/11, George Bush, whose favorite movie is “High Noon,” told Americans he was going after bin Laden: “I want justice. There's an old poster out west...’Wanted: Dead or Alive.’"

Last night, in the Reagan Library, John McCain strapped on his six-guns and promised: ”We will track him down. We will catch him. We will bring him to justice and I'll follow him to the gates of hell."

Mitt Romney, arguing that the townsfolk should be after others beside bin Laden, nonetheless agreed that “he is going to pay and he will die.”

Even Rudy Giuliani, as urban as you can get, fell back on shootout imagery, noting that Iranian bad men had "looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes and in two minutes they released the hostages."

Just before he went into politics, Reagan had hosted “Death Valley Days,” a TV series sponsored by 20 Mule Team Borax. He was picked because Americans had seen him in such westerns as “Santa Fe Trail,” “Cattle Queen of Montana” and “The Cowboy from Brooklyn.”

Ever since, in times of trouble, Republicans have fallen back on Old West clichés to distinguish them from Democratic city slickers without manly virtues or, as Ann Coulter would say, “faggots” with $400 haircuts.

It may work, at least with the media posse. On MSNBC Howard Fineman of Newsweek looked at the candidates and went into a slight swoon: “There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there’s an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring.”

Peggy Noonan who put Clint Eastwood’s “Read my lips” into Bush I’s mouth, while waiting for Sheriff Fred Thompson to ride into town, still has a good word in today's Wall Street Journal for McCain’s “gates of hell” line: “Go, baby.”

Americans used to be leery of men on horseback riding in to save them. Have times changed that much?