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Ms. Dowd does her job on those Swift Boat Veterans attacking Kerry's Vietnam service, giving the larger context of Republican dirty tricks through the years.
In an earlier discussion, Monk remarked that this Republican attack group had perhaps exhausted their fifteen minutes of notoriety in this election, but he now knows that he misspoke. The issue is still burning strong, and still a big topic on yesterday's Sunday chat shows.
It's a little disconcerting to see what is happening to Kerry's advantage in the projected electoral count, which has slimmed appreciably. And the Republican convention is coming fast, which is likely only to be a boon to the Bush campaign. Read 'em and weep:
Bush. 233
Kerry 286
If you only look at the strong states, it only gets worse, with Bush actually leading with 142 votes over Kerry's 102. This doesn't make much sense to me, but those are the numbers given, and it has to give one pause.
___ ___ ___
WASHINGTON — It's easy for the Bushes to stay gallant. They delegate the gutter.
There are always third-party political assassins, ostensibly independent, to do the dynasty wet work.
W.'s old pal and running partner, Lee Atwater, set up the Bush modus operandi: Lay in the weeds while craftily planting plausibly deniable surrogates to slice up your rival.
The New Yorker editor David Remnick, writing in Esquire in 1986, limned the 1980 Congressional race in South Carolina's Second District "between Atwater's man, Republican Floyd Spence, and a Faulknerian figure named Tom Turnipseed At one press briefing, Atwater planted a reporter who rose and said, 'We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment.' Atwater played it cool and refused to comment, but later told the reporters off the record, 'In college I understand he got hooked up to jumper cables.' "
Karl Rove is Atwater's protégé on jumper cable politics.
The weird thing is, given how transparently the Bushes play the game of staying above the fray even as their creepy-crawly surrogates do dishonorable and undignified things, their rivals always seem caught off guard when the third parties show up to rip their throats out.
The phlegmatic Michael Dukakis never knew what hit him with Mr. Atwater's Frankenstein monster Willie Horton coming at him in a third party scare ad and G.O.P. smear leaflets and letters.
John McCain should have known what was coming in South Carolina, but he acted stunned and hurt when he was hit with the Atwater/Rove mud treatment by shadowy Bush supporters.
Just as the Bush campaign dragged out fringe veteran surrogates in South Carolina to slime the former P.O.W. for being antiveteran, now the stomach-turning Swift boat attackers are sliming a war hero as a war criminal.
They started their vengeful and brazen campaign in May, after plotting since winter. But John Kerry is only now forcefully responding - though he should have had a response ready, since the Nixon tool John O'Neill has dogged him since '71.
Charging on Thursday that Mr. Bush wants the Swift boat sleazoids "to do his dirty work," Mr. Kerry reached for yet another Vietnam reference and water metaphor: "When you're under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack."
The Skipper would do well to get a swifter boat. How pathetic is it that he's playing defense on Vietnam when W. didn't even serve?
Bill Clinton implied two weeks ago that Mr. Kerry was acting sluggish. "Whenever they hit me, I hit 'em back," he told Jon Stewart. "And whenever they came up with a charge I didn't believe was true, I answered back."
Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry.
The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration's Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters. "A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice," Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg wrote. Indeed, it was the same woman who worked for a third party group that slimed Mr. McCain on the environment in the 2000 primaries.
And the group's ad was produced by the Dukakis tank ad wizards.
The Kerry camp knows the Swift boat snipers are hurting the Democrat and fears the Bush oppo campaign will soon move from tarnishing Mr. Kerry's war record to dwell on his days as a shaggy-haired antiwar spokesman. The White House must tear down his heroism before it can tear down his patriotism.
Meanwhile, the Bush crew is shamelessly doing to Mr. Kerry what it once did to Mr. McCain: suggesting that the decorated Vietnam vet has snakes in his head and a temperament problem. "Senator Kerry appears to have lost his cool," Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford on Friday. And the Bush campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said on CNN that Mr. Kerry looked "wild-eyed" responding to Swift boat muck.
It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.
-- Maureen Dowd for The NY Times
Ms. Dowd does her job on those Swift Boat Veterans attacking Kerry's Vietnam service, giving the larger context of Republican dirty tricks through the years.
In an earlier discussion, Monk remarked that this Republican attack group had perhaps exhausted their fifteen minutes of notoriety in this election, but he now knows that he misspoke. The issue is still burning strong, and still a big topic on yesterday's Sunday chat shows.
It's a little disconcerting to see what is happening to Kerry's advantage in the projected electoral count, which has slimmed appreciably. And the Republican convention is coming fast, which is likely only to be a boon to the Bush campaign. Read 'em and weep:
Kerry 286
If you only look at the strong states, it only gets worse, with Bush actually leading with 142 votes over Kerry's 102. This doesn't make much sense to me, but those are the numbers given, and it has to give one pause.
___ ___ ___
WASHINGTON — It's easy for the Bushes to stay gallant. They delegate the gutter.
There are always third-party political assassins, ostensibly independent, to do the dynasty wet work.
W.'s old pal and running partner, Lee Atwater, set up the Bush modus operandi: Lay in the weeds while craftily planting plausibly deniable surrogates to slice up your rival.
The New Yorker editor David Remnick, writing in Esquire in 1986, limned the 1980 Congressional race in South Carolina's Second District "between Atwater's man, Republican Floyd Spence, and a Faulknerian figure named Tom Turnipseed At one press briefing, Atwater planted a reporter who rose and said, 'We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment.' Atwater played it cool and refused to comment, but later told the reporters off the record, 'In college I understand he got hooked up to jumper cables.' "
Karl Rove is Atwater's protégé on jumper cable politics.
The weird thing is, given how transparently the Bushes play the game of staying above the fray even as their creepy-crawly surrogates do dishonorable and undignified things, their rivals always seem caught off guard when the third parties show up to rip their throats out.
The phlegmatic Michael Dukakis never knew what hit him with Mr. Atwater's Frankenstein monster Willie Horton coming at him in a third party scare ad and G.O.P. smear leaflets and letters.
John McCain should have known what was coming in South Carolina, but he acted stunned and hurt when he was hit with the Atwater/Rove mud treatment by shadowy Bush supporters.
Just as the Bush campaign dragged out fringe veteran surrogates in South Carolina to slime the former P.O.W. for being antiveteran, now the stomach-turning Swift boat attackers are sliming a war hero as a war criminal.
They started their vengeful and brazen campaign in May, after plotting since winter. But John Kerry is only now forcefully responding - though he should have had a response ready, since the Nixon tool John O'Neill has dogged him since '71.
Charging on Thursday that Mr. Bush wants the Swift boat sleazoids "to do his dirty work," Mr. Kerry reached for yet another Vietnam reference and water metaphor: "When you're under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack."
The Skipper would do well to get a swifter boat. How pathetic is it that he's playing defense on Vietnam when W. didn't even serve?
Bill Clinton implied two weeks ago that Mr. Kerry was acting sluggish. "Whenever they hit me, I hit 'em back," he told Jon Stewart. "And whenever they came up with a charge I didn't believe was true, I answered back."
Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry.
The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration's Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters. "A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice," Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg wrote. Indeed, it was the same woman who worked for a third party group that slimed Mr. McCain on the environment in the 2000 primaries.
And the group's ad was produced by the Dukakis tank ad wizards.
The Kerry camp knows the Swift boat snipers are hurting the Democrat and fears the Bush oppo campaign will soon move from tarnishing Mr. Kerry's war record to dwell on his days as a shaggy-haired antiwar spokesman. The White House must tear down his heroism before it can tear down his patriotism.
Meanwhile, the Bush crew is shamelessly doing to Mr. Kerry what it once did to Mr. McCain: suggesting that the decorated Vietnam vet has snakes in his head and a temperament problem. "Senator Kerry appears to have lost his cool," Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford on Friday. And the Bush campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said on CNN that Mr. Kerry looked "wild-eyed" responding to Swift boat muck.
It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.
-- Maureen Dowd for The NY Times
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 11:43 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:24 pm (UTC)From:When you think about it, at this point, independents aren't really independent... they don't really want to vote for Bush, or else they would be in his camp already. What they want is for Kerry to demonstrate that he's got the balls to weather the course. If Kerry just stays cool, stays above the fray as much as he can, holds steady and puts in a good debate showing, he just might take it... with no room for the kind of fiasco that went down in Florida.
My gut instinct is that Kerry is still in good shape, especially when you consider the sheer amount of horseshit that's been flung on him... in a different election cycle, he wouldn't have even survived.
Furthermore, the polls as they are now are really a terrible showing for an incumbent President. They are going to swing back and forth a bit before November, but it's very clear that Bush is weak, that they've hauled out a lot of big attacks and can't seem to gain back the ground, and they're going to run out of direction but fast.
I also think that a lot of people are picking up on the desperate flailings of the Republican party, and it does seem disingenuous to many.
Bush is trying to make the Swift Boat thing a 527 issue because he does know that the last thing that the Republicans want in debates is a comparison of the two candidates' Vietnam record. He wants to take it out of that territory.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:32 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:35 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 07:15 pm (UTC)From:By the way, have you seen this Yahoo piece on the sensation that book has become by the Republican Swift Boaters. (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040823/media_nm/media_barnesandnoble_dc_2)
I was thinking it was nothing, too, perhaps even having some backlash. But I'm not so sure anymore. And there's still more attack to be had on Kerry's war protester days. This story has legs in our electorate.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 07:31 pm (UTC)From:As for the attacks on his anti-war protest days, again, that's tricky territory for the anti-Kerry groups and it has the potential to backfire on them, since anyone who thought that Vietnam was a just war is probably voting for Bush anyway... I think it's pretty well known at this point that, whether the goal of the war be admirable or a mistake, in the end Vietnam was truly FUBAR.
I suspect most undecideds, if it comes down to that, are going to be more of the type who aren't quite old enough to have really experienced the impact of Vietnam, whether they were alive for it or not, and the significance of Kerry's dissent will be largely lost. They will likely be of the type that associates Vietnam with the draft, an awful lot of American deaths, and an awful lot of social upheaval. They won't be the type to be like, "OMG HE PROTESTED VIETNAM!!! OMG OMG OMG"
Even some of the undecideds who WERE alive... Kerry's anti-Vietnam behaviour might not be such a sticking point. My dad wasn't really the devoted Dem back then, and he remembers shortly after the war, turning to my mother and saying, "Have you ever thought that maybe the protesters might be right about all of this?" There are a lot of those types still around.
Kerry then has an opening to point out that his testimony and activism was a key factor in paving the way for the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and putting the draft in the past.
And he also has the benefit of bringing forth his testimony, including his now-legendary line, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" (speaking of which, I had heard that line bazillions of times and didn't know it was his until last week), the great bulk of it which is, to use his words, both sensitive and strong, and even sometimes extraordinarily prescient (not unlike his speech when authorizing the President to go to war in Iraq).
In short, I think that Kerry is right now quite capable of standing up against attacks of that nature, and benefits from the fact that they really are ones that can't be spun in a singleminded way. They can also work to his benefit.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 07:32 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 09:49 pm (UTC)From:Remember, too, Kerry didn't just protest the Vietnam War, he was calling his fellow soldiers war criminals, and doing so while they were still fighting, and he also threw away his medals (if that's not a false story), which is almost like burning the flag. Indeed, all we need is a video of Kerry burning the flag, and that would be the end of his candidacy, and we can just pronounce Bush the victor now.
I'm not saying that it's clear how this will ultimately play out - this Republican attempt to make an issue out of Kerry's service and his anti-war protests. It is a double-edge sword in some respects. And I imagine there are reasons why Bush has finally condemned these anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads, as he sees it must be starting to hurt him.
Things just promise to be interesting...
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 10:05 pm (UTC)From:Keep in mind also that in early July, the Bush campaign actually PULLED one run of Kerry-bashing ads because they were not having a measurable effect, and seeing as they weren't having a measurable effect, Rove et. al were afraid of it reflecting badly on them.
The McCain thing was truly weird, and I chalk the Cleland defeat more up to the torrential political climate of that immediate time. Things being slightly more stable now, I think that any more negativity from either end will cost them points, not gain them. As well, each attack Kerry survives makes him look tougher. He's like a boxer who the other guy just can't KO.
As for the protests, I read his transcripts (all of them) a few days ago, and I don't see what the problem is. He testified to events he knew that were occuring, and that we now basically know did happen. Furthermore, given the fact that the recent events at Abu Ghraib make it seem all the more plausible and even probable, Kerry could easily turn this to his advantage by demonstrating that he had the courage to come out early against what he had seen.
He referred to war crimes. But he also referred a lot to patriotism and love for his fellow soldiers.
Also, he didn't throw away his medals, just the ribbons.
Given the way that Vietnam ultimately planned out, Kerry CAN spin it to his advantage. It's not an inherent advantage, and I realize the Bush campaign sees it as a weakness. But he did enough good in regards to speaking out against a war that is still synonymous with disaster (think of all the "IRAQ: ANOTHER VIETNAM?!" type of newspaper headlines in the last year) that he can draw that parallel.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 06:45 pm (UTC)From:I only want to bring out the proposition that 'excessive negativity' may get voters to feel against it, but I think the sad wisdom is that negative ads work.
At least, I just watched some Chris Matthews "Hardball" where pundits across the partisan and ideological divide agree that they do work, and that's why you got to hit back hard. For instance, it is being said that these attacks on Kerry are wearing on his numbers, and this is a tough time for him.