President attacks Kerry's liberal record

Telegraph ^ | 10/8

[ambrose]

President attacks Kerry's liberal record

By Alec Russell in Washington

(Filed: 08/10/2004)

President George W Bush will tonight intensify his efforts to brand his rival as too liberal and defeatist, in a debate that has assumed a critical place in the race for the White House.

Senator John Kerry's staff expect a fusillade of attacks on his long and liberal record in the senate, as Mr Bush attempts to make up the ground he lost in the first presidential debate last week.

The President meets the people of Wausau, Wisconsin Convinced by their own propaganda, many Republicans sat down to watch that debate expecting a cakewalk for their champion and were startled to find that it was Mr Kerry who came away looking the more confident and even presidential.

So the mood last night was very different from the eve of the first debate when there were reports of Bush campaign staff smoking cigars in bars, even as Mr Kerry's aides artfully spread rumours of jitters in their camp.

A "poll of polls" taken by five polling organisations before last week's debate gave Mr Bush a six-point lead. The same group now gives him a two-point advantage among likely voters. Mr Kerry gained three points on the strength of his performance, Mr Bush lost only one.

Tuesday night's vice-presidential debate, traditionally a sideshow in the race, gave a striking insight into Mr Bush's expected tactics tonight, and also showed how the race is taking a unique turn.

Usually when a president is seeking a second term the election is a referendum on the incumbent. But with public concern mounting over the situation in Iraq, Mr Bush's campaign staff are pushing instead to make the election a referendum on Mr Kerry, zeroing in relentlessly on his 20-year legislative record.

In the vice-presidential debate Mr Kerry was mentioned by name 65 times, whereas there were barely half as many references to Mr Bush.

Yesterday the president was on the campaign trail in the swing state of Wisconsin, where he rammed home his new aggressive stump tone, hammering Mr Kerry as a "tax and spend liberal" with a "record of weakness".

Mr Kerry in contrast was in a ballroom in Colorado, practising for tonight's town hall-style debate as his aides promoted the idea that his opponent was in deep trouble. Mr Kerry's spin doctors peddled a very different pre-debate message from the one they had circulated last week, when he was floundering after two months of disarray.

Then they played down expectations in the hope that a victory would be seen as all the more remarkable and so give him added momentum. Now they have the opposite problem. Anything short of an outright defeat of Mr Bush could be seen as a slowing of the Kerry bandwagon.

Privately they concede that while the first debate has made the race competitive, with three-and-a-half weeks to go before polling, Mr Kerry still has much to do.

Even as the public appears increasingly uncertain about the wisdom of invading Iraq, Mr Bush retains a substantial lead on the vital issue of the handling of terrorism.

While Mr Kerry has pulled back to parity with Mr Bush in handling the economy, he has to establish a clear lead on the issue if he is to win. And he is still only even on other domestic issues, including education, which should be a colossal asset for the Democrat.

Possibly more important still, Mr Bush holds an advantage on the "values", religious and social, that are so important to American voters - and also on the "vision thing", to use the mangled coinage of the first President Bush.

[Paladin2]

JF'nK is and has always been a puppet of Ted Kennedy.

Pass it on.

[VRWCTexan]

I hope and pray that "W" comes out swinging hard and pulls no punches!!

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Hopefully, the town hall debate won't be packed with idiots demanding the candidates what the gooberment will do for him/her.

[etradervic]

The Kerry Platform:

Favors – Affirmative Action Hiring using Federal Funds
Opposes – Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion
Opposes – Ban on homosexual marriage
Opposes – Abstinence Education
Opposes – Education Vouchers
Opposes – Medicare Prescription Drug Plan
Opposes – Social Security Reform
Opposes – Death Penalty
Opposes – Mandatory 3 strikes sentencing laws
Opposes – More penalties for Gun and Drug Violations
Opposes – Tax Reform
Opposes – Tax Reduction
Opposes – Military Spending
Opposes – Proposed Missile Defense System

[cripplecreek]

SUPRISE!!! Thought you were going to make it to election day without your record becomming an issue didn't ya Johnny?

[Bommer]

Flash Movie - John Kerrys Bad Rap!

[Imaverygooddriver]

We`ll I`ll be praying that Bush kicks butt tomorrow otherwise we may be looking at someone I personally consider nothing less than an enemy of this country running it. Al-Qaeda and every other scum mutt on this planet will have our national security under their thumb if that happens. Of all people to consider as President during time of war, the `Rats couldn`t have picked a worse punk than poodle boy.

http://swift3.he.net/~swift3/answers.pdf

[Lady GOP]

Frist's comment about Kerry's Senate attendance understates his record.

According to an analysis by Congressional Quarterly -- which the Bush campaign pointed reporters to -- Kerry has missed 89 percent of the Senate's votes this year (118 of 132) as of Monday, and 64 percent last year.

This included several votes on veterans' health care issues.

[jrushing]

President attacks Kerry's liberal record

Amazing.
The headline should read,

"President explains Kerry's liberal record."

[Lady GOP]

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[Republican Wildcat]

You don't want to overdo it.

[crazycat]

"The President meets the people of Wausau, Wisconsin Convinced by their own propaganda, many Republicans sat down to watch that debate expecting a cakewalk for their champion and were startled to find that it was Mr Kerry who came away looking the more confident and even presidential."

Every article this little turd writes, has a glowing 'Effin reference, somewhere in it. I look fwd to the time he chokes on his boys utter failure.

[GailA]

Check your links they lead to an error page.

[ppaul]

	E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend

October 07, 2004, 8:53 a.m.
Seared in Their Memories
Former POWs remember Kerry all too painfully well.

Amid the controversies over John Kerry's and George W. Bush's real and invented military records, the Mainstream Media spotlight has avoided one amazing fact: Former Vietnam POWs remember their captors using Kerry's words as instruments of intimidation and torture.

"The interrogator went through all of these statements from John Kerry," recalls James Warner, a Marine pilot who was shot down and held near Hanoi for five years and five months. "He starts pounding on the table. 'See, here, this naval officer. He admits that you are a criminal and that you deserve punishment.' ...I didn't know what was going to come next. In other words, for the rest of the time we were in that camp, I was very ill at ease."

Warner — who earned a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts — appears in Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal. This 45-minute documentary, produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carlton Sherwood, is available via stolenhonor.com. It presents POWs who argue that John Kerry's fallacious spring 1971 claims that U.S. atrocities occurred "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" amplified their agony under America's North Vietnamese enemies. (See, also, Kate O'Beirne, "Honor Reclaimed.")

"That was a very difficult time," says former Air Force pilot Leo Thorsness, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner who spent five years and 19 days in North Vietnamese hands. "The things he [Kerry] said were just devastating, because he was using words like 'war criminal' and that kind of stuff. As a prisoner of war, we were being told we were war criminals, and that we'd be tried for war crimes, and unless we confess, and ask for forgiveness, and badmouth the war, and take their side in the war, we'd never go home."

Adds retired Air Force colonel Ken Cordier: "I was outraged and still am that he [Kerry] willingly said things which were untrue — the very same points that we took torture not to write and say." Cordier was incarcerated for six years and three months.

Stolen Honor describes the conditions in which POWs were detained. They were held in solitary confinement and communicated among each other by tapping coded messages through the dark, dank walls. Some prisoners were hung from the walls with their wrists behind their backs, causing shoulder injuries that persist even today. Others, who broke limbs in combat, were forced to sit or stand in positions that exacerbated their agony. The North Vietnamese constantly tormented them psychologically, to fracture their will and shatter their morale. John Kerry's voice aided those efforts.

Former Navy pilot Paul Galanti remembers his jailers at the so-called Hanoi Hilton playing English-language radio broadcasts of Kerry's April 22, 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"They made a big deal about this guy who was a naval officer, talking about all these atrocities and war crimes," Galanti told Human Events. "They'd been for years saying, 'You're not prisoners of war, you're war criminals. You're never going home. We're going to try you after the war, and you'll all be found guilty of war crimes.'"

Not long ago, Galanti linked that voice from yesterday with the man running for president today. While recently watching a documentary on the peace movement, Galanti heard Kerry claim that American GIs in Vietnam "razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." Kerry distinctly pronounced "Genghis" with soft Gs (as in "gelatin") rather than hard ones (as in "grit").

"Right away, I said, 'Hey, wait a minute. That's the guy I heard in Hanoi,'" Galanti concluded.

Former Air Force captain Tom Collins also remembers his North Vietnamese captors forcing him to listen to Kerry's statements as well as Jane Fonda's antiwar remarks.

"I wasn't necessarily disappointed in Jane Fonda," Collins told Human Events. "I figured she's just some airhead Hollywood actress. So what? But then along comes this military officer...I expected more out of a Navy lieutenant. That's why I was so demoralized. It was far worse for him to do it."

Put yourself in these men's shoes: Imagine the prospect of hearing from the Oval Office the same voice your jailers used 33 years ago to break your mind in two.

	http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200410070853.asp

[feedback doctor]

Can you say October Surprise?

The 'surprise' is no surprise. The next few weeks will see the largest campaign ever exposing how out of the mainstream John Kerry is. You haven't heard a lot about his being an extreme liberal from his opponent, at least not yet. TV ads and on the campaign trail, the Republicans will be accused of going negative by exposing JOhn KErry's liberal record. It will become the campaign issue, he will be attacked on his liberal record on domestic and national security issues. We have all said, why doesn't Bush bring up this or that. It WILL be brought up, in a non-stop onslaught that will last up to the election. Kerry will try to ignore it like he did with Swift Boat Vets, but when he tries to respond it will be too little too late. He will never catch up defending his record because the truth will come fast and furious. The Swift Boat ads will look tame. Kerry has said some outragous things, some anti-American things, and I'm not just talking about the Vietnam episode. Some of his record being exposed (in light of the realities of a post 9/11 world) will make him look like the socialist we know that he is. I don't know that Bush will start those engines in debate 2, but they will be started, and they will run until victory cirle.

YTou heard it here first!

[feedback doctor]

Why do the Republican wait so late to bring this up, to not allow the partian media the time to mount kerry's defense.

[feedback doctor]

partian=partisan