March 10, 2004
PUMMELING THE PUMICE WIELDER:
How ‘flip-flop’ kills Kerry (Dick Morris, March 10, 2004, Jewish World Review)
The obvious goal of the Bush attack is to discredit Kerry and make it hard for anyone to believe in him or anything he says. But this round of flip-flop attacks is just the precursor of the main Bush offensive. Attacking Kerry for reversing himself on many key issues will weaken the Democrat, but the real point is to soften him up for two more deadly attacks likely to follow.First, the flip-flop ads are designed to make Kerry appear too weak to lead America through the tough challenges of terrorism at home and abroad. Attacking a candidate for reversing himself on key political issues is the best way to make him appear weak, indecisive and vacillating. [...]
Bush wants to show that Kerry is too weak to lead the nation as a wartime president. It is no accident that Bush is opening his paid media campaign by reminding voters of his strong stance in the months after 9/11. He wants to raise the saliency of terrorism as an issue and to up the ante for the strength required of a chief executive. The flip-flop ads are his way of doing it.
By showing the Democrat as a man who can be pushed first one way and then the other by political winds, he shows him to be far from the strong, decisive leader America needs.
The flip-flop attack is also designed to prevent Kerry from responding to the other key line of Bush attack - that Kerry is too liberal for mainstream America.
By criticizing Kerry for changing his position constantly, the Bush campaign hopes to stop their opponent from wriggling out of his previous liberal votes and views. Once the public is alert to the chance that Kerry will change his mind, it becomes harder for the Democrat to explain away his votes and to move to the center under Bush's fire. [...]
Conventional wisdom says that this election is going to be close, a replay of 2000. It need not be so. If Bush runs aggressive national advertisements, hammering at these themes, he can put this race away by the end of the spring.
There'll likely be the annual dip in the President's support when he spends August in Crawford, but the wind-down in Iraq and continued economic growth combined with the marginal nature of Mr. Kerry's candidacy make for an easy re-election. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2004 10:25 AM
The Dems response to this eminently obvious challenge will be...you guessed it: he served in Viet-Nam.
Interestingly, Kerry's Viet-Nam combat record should give everybody -- those who want decisive action and those who want none -- pause. It shows an overly aggressive young man whose commander criticized for being too impetuous. (Sure he was young, etc., but who brought up the issue anyway?) It looks like the only way you get Kerry to show courage is to act without thinking. Otherwise, you get a typical liberal that could not pick his own side on a fight. Come to think of it, he is a Bill Clinton with a few months of active military service.
Posted by: MG at March 10, 2004 10:45 AMA dip in August ? What does that mean ? Losing 30-70 to Kerry instead of 44-52 like he does now ?
Posted by: Peter at March 10, 2004 11:05 AM"Losing 30-70 to Kerry"
In France maybe.
Posted by: David Hill, The Bronx at March 10, 2004 11:41 AMPeter - just keep reminding yourself that Dukakis was up over Bush Sr double digits in Aug/Sept 1988 and went on to lose handily.
Posted by: AWW at March 10, 2004 12:27 PMBush senior destroyed Dukakis with a extremely negative campaign. Since that day, Republicans who do that get slaughtered in the media ("they're so meeeeaaaan !!!). Bush junior is too nice to even try the same thing against the loathsome Senator from Marseille, er, Massachussets.
Posted by: Peter at March 10, 2004 12:33 PMHe (they) will do and say anything if his numbers stay low. Plus, I don't think he's that "nice" when it comes to his political opponents.
Posted by: David Hill, The Bronx at March 10, 2004 12:49 PMDon't forget that this August there's a big multi-week anti-American extravaganza taking place in Athens Greece that will be the big story absent anything else important happening.
Unless JF***Kerry can get those foreign leaders who want him to win to tone it down a bit, people are either not going to be caring about presidential politics, or getting annoyed with the petty slights from his supporters.
Peter,
I worked on the Dukakis campaign. He was a lousy candidate and everyone working the phones and waving signs knew it before election night.
Posted by: Jason Johnson at March 10, 2004 1:46 PMWait until Kerry unveils his campaign motto:
"In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 10, 2004 4:17 PM