Posted on 03/11/2004 8:28:00 AM PST by SheLion
Between your favorite television shows, prepare to see a lot of American flags for the next two weeks - and probably the next eight months. On Wednesday, Maine became one of 17 battleground states to hear the first shots, so to speak, in the fight for the White House, as the Media Fund, a Democratic leaning nonprofit group, offered its response to a series of ads released last week by President Bush's re-election campaign.
The Media Fund's $5.1 million ad buy, running only in targeted states, is harshly critical of Bush's handling of the economy, consistently listed as among voters' top concerns for the 2004 election.
"Remember the American Dream?" the ad's narrator asks amid images of children swinging and farmers throwing bales of hay into a barn.
"It's about jobs at home, not tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. It's about giving our children their chance, not our debt. It's about providing health care for people, not just profits."
Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff to President Clinton and founder of the Media Fund, said the 30-second spot was reflective of an "increasing concern about the direction of the country."
"It's about a radical Republican agenda which favors the very rich at the expense of the middle class," Ickes said during a Wednesday conference call.
Bush campaign officials were quick to counter the ads, which they characterized as more of the same pessimism heard during the Democratic primary.
"They're intent on injecting negativity into the campaign," said Bush campaign spokesman Kevin Madden, who predicted the ads would hurt, not help, the Democratic effort. "Voters don't want to hear what you're against. They want to hear what you're for."
While the ad has raised Republican hackles, the Media Fund itself has drawn fire from the GOP, which contends the group is circumventing new campaign finance laws by raising and spending "soft money" - large, loosely regulated contributions - on behalf of a presidential candidate.
The new campaign finance laws prohibit national party committees from using soft money. But the laws are silent on its use by nonprofit groups such as the Media Fund, which is part of a Democratic coalition set on defeating Bush in 2004.
Use of the so-called "527" nonprofit groups, shorthand for the section of the tax code regulating them, is already under legal challenge, with the Federal Election Commission set to meet this month to discuss new rules governing their campaign activities.
About $70,000 of the Media Fund's $5.1 million ad buy was being spent in Maine, a state Bush lost by about 33,000 votes, or 5 percent, in 2000.
A poll released Wednesday by Portland-based Strategic Marketing Services suggested Bush would lose in Maine to likely Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry by a similar margin if the election were held today.
Maine's four Electoral College votes hardly seem like the grand prize in a general election in which 270 are needed to win, say those who doubt Maine's status as a true battleground state, a term often reserved for larger swing states such as Ohio and Michigan.
Regardless of Maine's influence, or relative lack thereof, the early television ads here signaled the candidates would pay attention to the small state, said Christian Potholm, a Bowdoin College political science professor.
"We're going to be very war-weary by the end," he said.
We already are! ack!
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LOL. My husband, who really doesn't follow politics, saw a Democrat campaign ad on TV and said "Oh no. We're going to have to listen to this kind of woe is me moaning and groaning for the next 9 months? Turn off the damn TV. If I wanted that kind of misery 24 hours a day, I'd shoot myself in the foot."
I doubt it very much. If only those on my Maine Ping List vote for the President, we are in BIG trouble!
With Senators Snowe and Collins being RINO, they are probably working for Kerry!
Ain't it the truth! The world has gone nuts. I see the predictions from the Bible coming truer every day!
Your hubby has it exactly right! I sure keep the remote close at hand, believe me!
Can you fill me in? About it being illegal? I'd love to know all about it, personally!
"Blessed are those who read aloud or hear the words of this prophecy and observe the things written in it, for the appointed time is near. Comfort one another with these words."
Many farms and farmers have been 'thrown' off their land for high taxes and mtg. payments beyond their means and this didn't just happen - it has been an ongoing mess for several decades. So Johnfonda Kerry is going to send people back to this once great American enterprise? How? By subsidizing them even more? Kerry hasn't said one new thing, just the same old rhetoric the Democrats have spewed for years - and never fixed!
Kerry is now launching class warfare again for a few malcontents who don't want anything but government handouts cradle to grave. The backbone of this country knows otherwise and they can see right through the cellophane of Johnfonda Kerry - just another anti-American who will raise your taxes, give our Sovereignty to the United Nations, is a secularist, is pro-abortion and will promise even more money to education where it is never accounted for and reduce defense spending i.e., the things our military needs to keep our security strong. Hanoi wants him; Militant Islamists want him, all thugs in the UN want him, the French want him – the Germans do not, he supports all things un-American including a wife who is way to the left of her husband (?) and spends millions on anti-American activists organizations. Hillary C. and George Soros want him and the NEA adores him.......This is the American Dream? No, it is the American Nightmare.
What are we up to now, Ms. B? 25-30 Conservatives in this state? Goodness! We couldn't carry our own WATER!
Bush 41 should sell his mansion down state and move out. Stop paying anything into this wasteland.
Oh YEA! Lewiston. LOL!
I just read where the cops found a dead man in the trunk of a car in Lewiston. My Gawd!
You know what I'm talking about, then!
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