He won't tell you that it's... socialism and surrender!
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Posted on 08/09/2004 4:18:48 PM PDT by RWR8189
USA Today Editorial: Kerry "Needs To Fill In The Blanks" On His Plan For Iraq. "But take a trip to www.johnkerry.com, Kerry's campaign Web site, and just what a President Kerry might do in Iraq remains elusive. The reasons have partly to do with the politics of the Democratic Party, which is torn between the many who opposed the war in the first place and the few, like Kerry himself, who supported it. But the result is that with the election just three months away, Kerry has done little to separate his views from those of President Bush…. Iraq isn't Vietnam, and Kerry's plan isn't quite as opaque as Nixon's, but the historical echoes are strong enough to suggest that if Kerry has a credible proposal for Iraq, he needs to fill in the blanks." (Editorial, "Missing In Action: Kerry's Complete Strategy For Iraq," USA Today, 8/9/04)
The Wall Street Journal Editorial: Kerry's Spending Proposals "Would Actually Increase The Deficit." "In a startling reversal of the usual party roles, John Kerry is staking his White House claim as a defender of 'fiscal discipline' to counteract a spendthrift Republican Administration. It's all the more startling because his publicly announced proposals would actually increase the deficit….According to last month's estimate from the National Taxpayers Union, Senator Kerry is promising to increase net spending by $226 billion in the first year, or $6,066 per taxpayer over four years. And that's a lowball figure. The calculation used the lowest cost estimate of each spending proposal. And it took at face value proposed spending cuts, such as ending subsidies to corporate farmers and reducing federal energy usage by 20%, which may be impossible to implement…. On top of Mr. Bush's huge education spending increases, the Democrats want to add $75 billion more in the first year alone. Another $56 billion is earmarked for public works and social programs. The Kerry health care proposals will cost another $71 billion that year, or $653 billion over 10, according to a former Clinton Administration economist. His original estimate was nearly $1 trillion until he found some miraculous savings. (Editorial, "Fiscal Follies," The Wall Street Journal, 8/9/04)
The Wall Street Journal Editorial: Kerry's Plan To Pay For All Of His Spending By Rolling Back Bush Tax Cuts Doesn't Add Up. "Yes, you may be saying, but John Kerry says he can pay for all this by taxing those who make more than $200,000 a year -- raking in $860 billion over the next decade. There are just a few problems. Current budget projections are based on current laws, which say the Bush tax cuts will phase out over the next five years unless Congress renews them. So the real take from soaking the rich a few years early will be modest, while the deficit projections will increase by a much larger margin if the middle-class tax cut is made permanent, as Mr. Kerry promises. (Editorial, "Fiscal Follies," The Wall Street Journal, 8/9/04)
The Washington Post Editorial: Kerry's Campaign Rhetoric Would Lead You To Believe He Is Both For And Against New Education Testing And Accountability Standards. "In person, Mr. Kerry sometimes sounds a different note. Asked this week in Washington about new federal testing regimes and accountability standards, he described them as 'punitive,' a charge that doesn't exactly shore up public confidence in the new system, or increase schools' incentives to raise standards. He both supported testing – 'we have to know kids are learning' -- and in the same sentence said it was necessary to look at 'the other factors by which you measure a child's progress,' whatever that means. He also talked less about raising teaching standards, and more about not forcing teachers who have been teaching for 20 years to 'go back and be recertified.' Needless to say, on the campaign trail he rarely mentions the importance of firing weak teachers. There is a pattern here. If Mr. Kerry's sometimes fierce rhetoric questioning the value of trade is matched by what his aides say is quiet support for trade, perhaps it is no surprise that his sometimes harsh vocal opposition to accountability standards also appears to be matched by quiet support for them. (Editorial, "Educating Voters," The Washington Post, 8/9/04)
How the RATs think Kerry will sell 'secret' plans to RAISE OUR TAXES through the roof and the US down the river to the UN...to American voters is mindboggling. No, he'll fog and fog, bore his listeners to death. Never answer any questions. Never tell the truth. Nuance and lie. Then his surrogates get on TV and spin and spin. He's so full of hot air, at some point he'll explode.
A different note? There's a third option? 'For' on even numbered days, 'against' on odd, I suppose.
It's a flip-flop headline!
Hell, this is typical liberal copying of past campaigns--it's the Nixon-secret-plan strategy! Only in this case, the war isn't as unpopular, and the candidate he's running against isn't Hubert Humphrey.
If they keep this crap up they might just lose their Senate minority veto, too.
Mostly I've seen poorly executed wholesale theft of Reagan's campaigns from the Democrats this election season. It is quite transparent, as the good ol' days of Reagan's vision and optimism and how he turned America around got so much play following his death. Suddenly, the dour, long in the face Kerry has transformed himself into a cheap immitation of Reagan, going around claiming to be "the optimist" and declaring its time to "believe in America again".
Who is it, exactly, that doesn't believe in America?
Could it be Kerry's liberal base that don't believe in America as a matter of ideology?
Of course Kerry's supposed message of "optimism" of how "America can do better" lacks both heart and soul, and Kerry instead only comes across haughty, as though he is lecturing people about why he is better than them.
But even if Kerry's performance wasn't dismal, this still isn't 1980, there is no national malaise (despite what Kerry is desperately tring to sell) and John Kerry is sure as hell no Ronald Reagan.
Kerry's message of "America can do better" is nothing but a hollow slogan at best, and is really just about saying how much he thinks America sucks than about any bright future he envisions.
They are trying to define themselves as the optimist party in such a transparent way...but Kerry AGAIN shot their strategy in the foot with his haughty "I'd have fought Iraq BETTER" answer.
This campaign reminds me of Dole against Clinton. I swear that year the Republican party decided that the standard bearer wasn't Clinton and that was enough, they might as well take the old party hack. This year, Kerry is trying to be the uberBush, and refuses to identify his differences in any way that will differentiate him substantially to the American people, just relying on his longevity and running from his record the way Dole did.
If Kerry had come out against the war, said, "I messed up," at least he'd have sounded like a penitent to the left. He might have even sounded it to the public.
Now, he just sounds like another bandwagon hopper. I am beginning to think Bush might run away with it (jinx jinx jinx).
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