Posted on 03/16/2004 4:07:50 PM PST by Shermy
Listening to Republicans, Democratic candidate John Kerry is sometimes a "liberal" , sometimes a fickle candidate ("My adversary has convictions... but they never last a very long time"), sometimes old pacifist without guts... For a few days, they have resorted to a new needle, soaked in an insidious poison: John Kerry is under European influence, even a little French on the edges.
At a meeting with big donors Monday in Florida, John Kerry was boasting to have received, in private, the support of several chiefs of government. "I met foreign leaders who cannot publicly declare that, but who said to me by fixing me of the eyes: "You must win, you must beat this guy, we needs a new policy!" " The declaration elicited from Terry Holt, spokesman of the Bush campaign: "the foreign friends of Kerry can prefer him as the American president, but this election is in the hands of the American people."
"Conspiracies". This is not the first time that Grand Old Party accused Kerry of having "European friends". On its Internet site, several pages refer to these friendships, under the title: "John Kerry, International Man of Mystery". Therein is invoked his "English friends", his "French friends", and even his "conspiracies". By way of illustration, a photograph shows the bad European influence: Kerry playing a classical guitar! Elsewhere, the Republicans wonder which foreigners begged Kerry to win the election: they suggest "any old how" the North-Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Kerry’s French first cousin Brice Lalonde, or the "French daily newspaper of the left Libération".
Already, last year, an anonymous Bush adviser let slip to a journalist for the Washington Post : "He looks French." The remark had then seemed grotesque, but it was the first shot. Several times, Texan Tom DeLay, leader of the Republican majority in the House of the Representatives, an incarnation of the Religious Right and friendly to Bush, launched this good joke at the start of his speeches: "Good afternoon, or `Bonjour,' as Kerry might say". Last week, DeLay (a name of French origin, it should be said in passing) clarified his insinuations a little more: to listen to him, Kerry was deformed by his European education. Not only is the Senator from Massachusetts married to a woman of Portuguese origin, raised in Africa, Teresa Heinz, but he spent a part of his childhood in Europe, between Oslo, Berlin, a Swiss boarding school and his vacations at Saint-Briac, in Brittany, the village where his grandmother had a mansion and whose mayor is Brice Lalonde. Commenting on the budgetary promises of the Democratic candidate, DeLay thus declared: "He did not learn arithmetic in the European boarding school where he was educated!"
"To galvanize the base." "the Republicans estimate they may find it beneficial to depict Kerry as a cosmopolitan character, without roots, to underline his international connections. "International" is a code word, it means: not really American ", comments on Todd Gitlin, professor at Columbia University and chronicler at the site opendemocracy.org. According to him, Republicans had to weigh the risk of offending voters of European origin and judged it was more advantageous, at this stage, to conduct this campaign "to galvanize the base".
The campaign attests to the Republicans’ fear vis-a-vis the rise of the Democrats in surveys: Kerry gets 48 % against 44 % for Bush, according to Washington Post, to 52 % against 44 % according to USA Today.
John Kerry expects all: "This will be hard, they will do everything to dirty me like Teresa", he assessed on Monday. But the Democrats are not saints either. The Republican Senator John McCain (who ran the campaign against Bush in the 2000 primary) forecasted, Sunday, "the most malicious countryside which one ever saw, on both sides".
Definitely my favorite.
Well, if the ketchup sticks...
This article is a comical coverup. The American they cite is an idiot. International? Probably half the people would vote for a Schwarzenegger/Blair ticket on fame alone.
Dems know very well what the people think. That's why Kerry has been ordered to not use the "F" word. Instead he uses the murky "European".
but always a kennedy socialist machine puppet.
Ah, so we finally discover that the foreign leader who supports him is Aristede.
Demonstrates that this Frenchie just doesn't get it. In Kerry's hands that was a folk guitar.
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind...
Oooooh Noooo, those darn wascally wepublicans!
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