Posted on 03/21/2004 12:22:59 PM PST by quidnunc
Last Sunday, the Bush-Cheney folks whose job it is to stay a step ahead of the John Kerry campaign got wind of the opposition's plan to launch a national defense-related attack on the president during a Tuesday speech in West Virginia.
By the time Kerry got to that state, which has five crucial electoral votes in play this year, he was greeted by a Bush television spot, custom-tailored for the day, aimed at making Kerry play defense on defense.
At Bush headquarters in Virginia, the spot, which aired only in West Virginia, was scored as a clean kill and touted as a hint of tactics to come. The incumbent team's quick-hit strategy is aimed at filling in what it sees as blanks in Kerry's public image.
"Troops," as the rush-job ad was called, went from concept to in-the-can in just over 24 hours.
"John Kerry. Wrong on defense," was the closing image in an ad featuring a quick retelling of Kerry votes construed by the Bush campaign as being against body armor and higher combat pay for troops as well as better health care for reservists. The ad stepped on Kerry's message as he held a West Virginia town hall meeting on military issues.
Saturday, Bush visited Florida and used the first rally of his re-election campaign to keep up the attack on Kerry, hitting his Democratic rival as favoring higher taxes.
"This is a time to inform the public about us and him. At some time, relatively soon, that window is going to close," said Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist. "It's not going to be in the next few days, but the window will close by June.
"It's not going to always be ads," he said of how Bush will attack. "It could be rallies. It could be a whole bunch of things."
Last week, Bush surrogates, right up to Vice President Dick Cheney, mounted concentrated attacks.
And satisfaction at Bush headquarters grew exponentially when Kerry, asked about a section of the "Troops" ad noting he voted against the $87 billion supplemental funding for U.S. troops in Iraq which included the body armor money said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
For the Bush campaign, ever-eager to paint Kerry as a waffler, it was a thank-you-God moment. As quickly as they ginned up the ad that elicited the response, Bush aides retooled it to include the Kerry comment.
By Thursday, the original West Virginia ad was running in an updated version on cable TV around the nation, adding Kerry's comment just before the "wrong on defense" tag line.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
First the RNC has to have enough sense to get Kerry on record wheteher he considers Saddanm a terrorist.
Because if Kerry says he is, then he can't say that the war in Iraq is not part of the war on terrorism.
Quite frankly I have had it up to the eyeballs with that schtick from these sniveling socialist sons of bitches that this is a "diversion" in the WOT.
Rumsfeld was right in wanting to bomb Iraq on 9/11, and Kerry ought to find out right quick that he shouldn't have brought this subject up.
Unless the RNC can't figure it out.
So far they don't seem to have done so.
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