G.O.P. Revives Line of Attack Against Kerry

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — Republicans and their allies have begun laying the groundwork for a familiar line of attack against Senator John Kerry:

That he is "out of sync" with most voters, "culturally out of step with the rest of America," a man who votes with "the extreme elements of his party," as Ed Gillespie, the Republican chairman, has put it in recent days.

In short, that he is a Massachusetts liberal. It is a charge that ultimately proved devastating to Michael S. Dukakis, the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1988, who ended the campaign battered by the Republicans as "a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.," a product of the "Harvard boutique" who coddled criminals and was too much of a legalistic liberal to require school children to say the pledge of allegiance.

(snip)

"Their tired old G.O.P. attack dog just won't hunt," Mr. Wade said, adding that Republicans would be running against "a Democrat who fought for his country in war, put criminals behind bars as a prosecutor, stood up for balanced budgets in the Senate," and "kept faith with America's veterans."

Another Kerry adviser was more blunt. "This is not the Dukakis campaign," the adviser said. "We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything."

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/02/05/politics/campaign/05MASS.html?hp

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. Good, let them think it is 1988 and that Kerry=Dukakis

And they can watch the inaguration on TV like the rest of the shlubs in this country.
Hard to say Kerry is bad cause he went to Yale, when your guy went there too, ain't it?

[phrenzy]

2. EVERYTHING

I fuckin' LOVE this quote!!


"This is not the Dukakis campaign," the adviser said. "We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything."

I love the emphasis on EVERYTHING. heh.

[Skip Intro]

11. 9*11 - ?

What is currently "not" on the table?

Interesting.

[BeatleBoot]

3. Outta Sync - Outta Mind

"out of sync"

LOTS OF LAUGHS!!!

ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!!

The only thing outta sync this time around is Bush and this year's election cycle.

Back to Crawford for the chimp - with his Crayons, Cheez-Whiz, and Silly String...

[Lugnut]

6. And.....

Don't foget the pretzels! :)

[JPace]

4. Same old repug tricks are not going to work this time...

AWOL has hurt so many people and is so out of
touch.

ABB-Anybody but bush is going to be on the minds
of most of the voters and Kerry will make a fine
President.

I watched his victory speech last night, it was
so refreshing to hear someone speak without ah and
uh and incomprehensible babble as AWOL does. I can't
wait to have a real President in the WH.

[MO_Dem]

5. To quote Kerry......

Briinnggg it ooonnnn!

[Zero Gravitas]

14. Bring It On!

Yup! I hope they take this approach, it would only cement their image as cynical political manipulators who believe their own propaganda. Fuck 'em!!! I really have hope that we can consign these bastards to the trash heap of history where they belong.

Out of touch?? LMAO! The Iraqi Information Minister was more in touch with reality than the Bush White house is.

Restore honor, dignity and honesty to the White House: vote ABB 2004!

[flamingyouth]

7. These people will stop at nothing

There's nothing they won't try, say or do. In a way, I kind of enjoy hearing Gillespie's comments because he's such a buffoon, but he also terrifies me at the same time. :scared:

[Carolina]

25. I hear ya

They scare me because they will stop at NOTHING, they have a huge war chest for attack ads and dirty tricks, and NOW they OWN the media.

Kerry may not be Dukakis but his persona/personality is not much different and the opposition has never been more powerful :scared:

[Terran]

8. They must be freakin' desperate

if the worst they can do to Kerry is paint him with that tired old brush. Whattsa matter boys? Can't find any dirt? This is laughable.

[mrdmk]

9. Lets remember this about 1988 Bush vs Dukakis

Mr. Bush Sr. played the race card with the Willie Horton ad Attacks.

Lets see the New York Times remember and report that.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. But don't forget it was Gephardt that first ran Willie Horton ads,

and Bush41 just picked it up and ran with it.
So, if there is dirt to be found, the GOP does not have to spend a dime until August... let the other Dems find it.

[mrdmk]

12. Good point! n/t

[Cocoa]

17. not really

it seems to have been Gore, not Gephardt, and even the charge about Gore seems to have been not quite accurate:

http://216.247.220.66/jacoby/2000/jj01-21-00.htm

BILL BRADLEY, who says his first priority as president would be to "promote racial understanding," now implies that Al Gore is a race-baiter for having been the first to raise the Willie Horton issue in the 1988 presidential campaign.

<snip>

But to be fair, it is not true that Gore "used Willie Horton" in 1988. In a debate with that year's Democratic presidential hopefuls, Gore noted that the Massachusetts practice of letting first-degree murderers take weekend "furloughs" from prison had freed some killers to commit new crimes. He asked whether Gov. Michael Dukakis intended to grant similar furloughs to federal prisoners. That was it.

"Al Gore made a legitimate criticism," said Dick Gephardt, himself a presidential candidate in 1988, in a statement defending Gore from Bradley's charge. "He never used Horton's name or image, and never resorted to race-baiting."

more...

[Cocoa]

15. more details, please...

please provide a link for this assertion about Gepardt.

The Daily Howler recently debunked some news pieces, including a Cokie Roberts commentary, that Al Gore used Horton in the primary before Bush used it.

Are you confusing Gephardt with Gore? And if so, please visit the Howler and see if maybe the info was bad.

[JI7]

16. no, it was Al Gore, not Gephardt

it was al gore who used willie horton against dukakis in the primary. not gephardt.

[mrdmk]

20. Well folks, here is what I do know

It was made into a political ad by the Bush Sr. campaign and it showed Willie Horton's picture. This ad was ran to the point of ad nauseaum.

If Al Gore or Dick Gephardt asked about the policy in general terms, that is a matter of questioning policy, not painting a picture. If the Bush Sr. campaign picked up on this discussion, then showed pictures of a black man implying that Dukakis does this just because he is a liberal and soft on minorities. Then this is taking matters to the next level.

[AlGore-08.com]

24. Al Gore NEVER used Willie Horton against Dukakis

Here is the truth about Gore and Willie Horton, from a letter the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby wrote to the Washington Post in May 2000:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/letter_051500.shtml

There is an obvious problem with this presentation. As Connolly knows well-as she has reported in the past-Gore never mentioned Horton's name in the 1988 primaries. In one debate (out of 42 total), he criticized the Massachusetts furlough program which had given Horton a weekend pass. But he never mentioned anyone's name; never mentioned anyone's race; never ran an ad on the subject; and never used any photos at all. The claim that Gore engaged in "slash-and-burn politics against fellow Democrats" by "raising the specter of Willie Horton" seems impossible to square with the facts.

The fact that DUers unknowingly repeat GOP smear points (even after other DUers point out the truth) in a thread claiming that future GOP smear campaigns are doomed to failure is pretty instructive.

One of the biggest problems we as a party face is that we constantly blame the victim. If the media trashes a Dem, we blame the Dem. The RNC has used the media to destroy Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Tom Daschle, Max Cleland, Gray Davis, Howard Dean... the list gets longer every day. They even launched a successful smear campaign against Paul Wellstone's funeral! And instead of holding the media accountable, instead of holding the GOP accountable, we blame the victims of the smear campaigns, throw them away like used kleenex, looking for some individual Democrat who can beat the entire U.S. media.

GOP smear campaigns work because there is a large body of Americans who do not pay attention to politics on any level. They vote based on personality, not issues. And they accept what the media says about the candidates. If they hear, over and over, that Michael Dukakis is a wimp, Bill Clinton is a slimebag, Al Gore is snobby liar, Jesse Jackson is sexual preditor (and crook), Tom Daschle is an obstructionist, Max Cleland is unpatriotic, Gray Davis is ripping you off, Howard Dean is mentally ill and that Paul Wellstone's funeral was a disgusting paritsan display - - they believe it.

As we've seen on this thread, you don't even have to be a non-progressive, or politically uninformed, to be believe RNC created lies about Democrats.

To believe that any candidate is safe from the GOP smear tactics is the biggest tactical error we can make.

[Carolina]

26. exactly, it was Gore

who brought it up and used the ISSUE against Dukakis. The dirt-slinging Bush campaign (like father, like son) took the issue and crafted it to the ultimate menacing, scary, racial-polarizing attack ad.

It played to race hatred and stereotypes as well as fear of crime, liberals being soft on crime, blah, blah, blah.

[Voltaire99]

13. If only Kerry *did* vote with the "extreme elements of his party"!

If he had opposed the war, for instance, I'd find him a morally palatable candidate.

Or if he had joined Senator Feingold in opposing the Patriot Act, I'd point to evidence of his courage.

But alas! Kerry is anything but independent-minded, as can be discerned from both his support for Bush policies and his corporate-funded election coffers.

And so, my friends, we arrive at a point in our political history when the demonization of Democrats by the Repukes describes a fantasy much to be coveted! Would the charges were true!

[OneBlueSky]

18. Kerry is actually much more conservative than Bush . . .

on some key issues . . . he was a strong supporter of the Clinton administration when they eliminated the budget deficit, whereas Bush has rung up record deficits in record time . . . if I recall correctly, balancing the budget has been a rock-solid conservative position for years . . . so who's more conservative on the issues that count? . . . certainly not George W. Bush . . .

[regnaD kciN]

19. For once, the GOP speaks the truth!

That he is "out of sync" with most voters, "culturally out of step with the rest of America," a man who votes with "the extreme elements of his party," as Ed Gillespie, the Republican chairman, has put it in recent days.

Yes...with his blank-check vote for Bush's IWR, Kerry showed that he (at least on occasion) votes with "the extreme elements of his party"...the extremely conservative, pink-tutu elements of his party. In other words, "the extreme elements of his party" that have given Bush all the support he needed. That sure puts him "out of sync" with me. But what does that say about the Republicans?

;-)

[yellowcanine]

21. Good - I hope they try this - they are making a classic mistake

People who fight the last war lose. Last time a Bush ran against a Mass. Dem., these tactics worked. Kerry is no Dukakis nor is w the same as poppy bush - big difference in war records for one thing. It also won't work for them to try and do a reprise of Bush-Gore. Funny how the Bushbots keep saying that 9-11 changed everything and now they are trying to tell us that they can defeat Kerry using 1988 tactics. I think they are floundering. Let's hope they remain confused.

[Tommy_Douglas]

22. That's a great comment...

Any dem running against Bush will need a backbone and strong resolve. The Bush Crime family is going to get down and dirty, but there's a lot more dirt in their house.

What's the saying? "Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

[Bandit]

23. Use his words and hold up a picture of Bush*

That he is "out of sync" with most voters, "culturally out of step with the rest of America," a man who votes with "the extreme elements of his party,"

[wabeewoman]

27. That's the thing.

bush lives in such a glass house he must be careful what he says. How can he accuse Kerry (or any democrat) of being tax and spend when he is preciding over the biggest deficit in history and we have nothing to show for it. The problem for bush is that he is so arrogant he can't see the facts.