Posted on 08/04/2004 7:33:31 AM PDT by Davis
E-mail to Candidate Kerry #11
From James (Cooter) Thompson
re: Post-Convention Helpful Hints
Dear Senator kerry:
Me and Boudreau and the guys down to Daryl's Bait Shop reporting for duty, Sir.
We can't say we were glued to our TV sets watching the Democratic Convention in Boston last week. It was so stagey, so lacking in genuine spirit that we felt embarrassed for you.
Good staging hides the fact that it is staged and makes it seem spontaneous and natural. But your Convention just reeked of staginess done by guys who are clever with the appearance of things but haven't the slightest grasp of their substance. You got to be careful of relying on wonks and nerds with fancy vocabularies and no common sense.
We think you could have done yourself a favor if you had crossed up your stagers and made your entrance on Thursday night on your $8000 bicycle dressed up in your $1000 gold Lurex outfit with the $750 racing helmet protecting your $350 haircut. You would've been flaunting what you can't hide, which is always the way to go.
We say "crossed-up your stagers" because we reckon if they'd got wind of your intentions, they would've put you on a thrift-shop Schwinn Roadmaster dressed in ragged cut-off jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt. That wouldn't have worked, we can tell you.
It's possible you could have attracted some voter support if you had vroomed into the Fleet Center (they aren't be the enema people, are they?) mounted on your Harley with your Mrs. on the pillion gnoshing a hotdog. That would've called the place to genuine attention.
Your speechwriters have done you dirt again. Remember, we warned you in e-mail #3 about them being on Karl Rove's secret payroll when they were inserting lines in your speeches without your knowledge. Well, they are at it again with a slightly different m. o.
They must have been polling far and wide and using focus groups and such to find out what the public thought of you. They must have discovered that a good many prospective voters thought you weren't strong enough to lead the country. So to combat this impression of weakness, your speechwriters decided on "a program of incantation." (That's Armen Yazoo's happy phrase.)
Their idea was to say the word s "strong" and "strength" so many times it would reverberate in our brains. A whole bunch of speakers were required to use those words, "strong, strength," when they referred to you. You yourself in your acceptance speech used "strong" 17 times.
This is an instance of the Rumplestilskin method of political persuasion. Say the secret word and win the Presidency. Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day, little Johnny wants to play.
But your scribes misunderstood the disease and chose an unwise cure. The voters' impression of you as weak, lacking leadership qualities, was caused by your lifetime habit of flip-flopping. It won't be cured by writing "strong" on the blackboard a million times
First you went to war in Vietnam, then you denounced your countrymen for allegedly having committed war crimes. Then you took your medals or your ribbons (or someone else's ribbons) and tossed them disgustedly at some fence in Washington, DC. Then you paraded around the country with Jane Fonda and friends hoping that the US would be defeated and the Viet Cong would win. Now, you've flip-flopped again and are trying to emphasize your service in "Nam.
Same kind of flip-flopping on the Iraq war. First you voted for it and spoke out in it favor of it, then you voted against funding its successful conclusion. Now you're either for it or against it, hard to tell which.
You did Olympic-class flip-flopping over abortion. You say you are against it and consider it the taking of a human life. But you insist that you don't favor opposing it. Armen Yazoo is the most nuanced guy in town and even he can't figure out this one.
You have over your many years in the Senate continually voted to reduce military appropriations. Have you changed your mind? Is that change of mind temporary, for the duration of the campaign only?
Incantation, chanting "strong" and "strength" repeatedly, alone and in a chorus isn't going to convince people you are personally strong and intend to keep America strong.
You have got world enough and time to give up incantation and stagey phoniness and show us your strength. Strength of character is what we mean. Me and Boudreau and the guys down to Daryl's respect a guy who can own up to mistakes and tell us plainly where he stands. You do that, Senator, and you are likely to find quite a few supporters here in Lagniappe, Louisiana.
Sincerely,
Cooter (with thanks to J. Boudreau, A. Yazoo and A. Trentino.)
Cooter's e-mail to Senator Kerry explains why there was no bounce in the polls after a solid week of Democart harangues.
Kerry is a stiff, arrogant, hack politician.
bump for Cooter!!
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