Dusting Off the Mind-Numbing MantrasPosted on 03/14/2004 3:10:40 PM PST by hope
Dusting Off the Mind-Numbing Mantras
Election 2000, Meet Campaign 2004
Commentary on the News
Sunday, March 14, 2004
- Omega Letter Editor
John Kerry, who has spent the past year attacking George Bush on everything from his military service to his religious views, is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. Now that it is officially Kerry v. Bush, Kerry hopes to use 'negative campaigning' as a campaign issue.
Kerry released a new ad calling on the Republicans to 'stop misleading America' and calling for the Bush team to stop its 'negative campaigning.'
Kerry's strategy is as simple as it is brilliant. It is also a textbook example of mass brainwashing. Don't take my word for it, you can watch the process as it unfolds.
First, Kerry has had a year to bash Bush. He did it so effectively that 'Bush-bashing' became a word. But during the nomination process, there were nine folks all bashing Bush, so any charges of 'negative campaigning' were diluted by the fact that 'everybody else' was.
Since Kerry now has the requisite delegates to secure the nomination, Kerry is out there in front, all alone. And he already knows his record is enough to sink a normal candidate facing a normal incumbent in a normal election in a normal world.
His conduct during the Vietnam War bordered on treasonous in the eyes of many Americans who served there. He doesn't want images of himself mocking the flag, or pretending to throw his medals over the White House fence, or painting all Vietnam veterans as being worse than Nazis, superimposed over sound bytes of himself bragging about his service in Vietnam.
Kerry's ties to far left liberal organizations, his voting record on defense and the military, his constantly changing positions on everything from the war against Saddam to gay marriage all leave him vulnerable.
So the strategy is to label everything the Republicans say as an 'attack' by labeling the Bush campaign as being comprised of Republican 'attack dogs'.
Kerry started referring to the Bush Dirty Tricks Squad and complaining about 'constant Republican attacks' against him long before he was even the presumptive nominee, let alone before anybody on the Bush side began to question his record.
Kerry has campaigned on being against 'George Bush's war with Iraq' and he wants to be sure that he innoculates himself against his previous, contradictory statements.
Kerry called Bush a 'liar' and accused him of making up evidence to support the Bush administration's allegations of weapons of mass destruction to benefit his business cronies at Halliburton. (formerly headed by Dick Cheney, in case you haven't been reminded of that in the last five minutes)
But when Bill Clinton was preparing to attack Saddam, Kerry was telling the same 'lies' he accused Bush of telling.
"(Saddam Hussein) cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation," Kerry said, according to the November, 1997 Congressional Record.
Although John Kerry, 2004, blistered Bush for not getting UN backing for taking out Saddam, when Kerry was arguing in favor of regime change in 1997, Kerry urged the Congress to do exactly the same thing.
"While we should always seek to take significant international actions on a multilateral rather than a unilateral basis whenever that is possible, if in the final analysis we face what we truly believe to be a grave threat to the well-being of our Nation or the entire world and it cannot be removed peacefully, we must have the courage to do what we believe is right and wise."
Although John Kerry, 2004, says that his Vietnam service makes him better qualified than Bush's National Guard service, in 1992, in supporting Bill Clinton's illegal dodging of the draft altogether, he argued, "We do not need to divide America over who served and how."
That same year Kerry stated before Congress, "Mr. President, you and I know that if support or opposition to the (Vietnam) war were to become a litmus test for leadership, America would never have leaders or recover from the divisions created by that war."
John Kerry doesn't want to have to answer charges that he will say anything to get elected, or that he has no definable bed-rock principles of his own. He doesn't want to have to explain how he can be pro-defense in light of his Senate voting record.
He doesn't want to see soundbytes of himself in Bush campaign ads taking both sides on every major issue. So, he began early on to label everything said about him that wasn't being said by his supporters as 'attacks'.
It is the same brainwashing technique used during the Election 2000 court battles. Al Gore's mind-numbing mantra still resounds in my consciousness. "Every vote should count" was repeated over and over.
So effective was the technique that his supporters never even noticed that while he was repeating it, his lawyers were in court trying to disqualify every vote for Bush. Their eyes also glazed over, and they began repeating after him, 'every vote should count.'
When Gore was unsuccessful in overturning the results of an election that he himself had already conceded, a new mantra was born in which the phrases 'Bush stole the election' and 'selected, not elected' innoculated Gore against the obvious charge that it was he who was trying to steal the election in the first place.
Kerry is already developing his own mantra to be repeated as often as possible by his campaign operatives. You'll hear it repeated over and over by his campaign operatives on the Sunday talking heads' shows from now til November.
Watch for the mantra, "Doesn't America deserve more from its president than misleading negative ads?" or some variation, coming soon to a TV screen near you.
You'll hear it every time John Kerry's record is questioned. What you won't hear are any answers. Don't take my word for it. Watch and see the process unfold for yourself. See how many people take up the chant.
And prepare to be amazed at how easy a brain is to wash.
Additional Resources:
Kerry Defends Calling Republicans 'Crooked'
Bush's negative ads spur Kerry rebuttal, debate on timing
Kerry asks Bush to duke it out on podium, not ads
"Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Saul Alinsky
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