McCain: Miller's attack on Kerry could hurt Bush

Chicago Tribune ^ | Janet Hook

[kattracks]

NEW YORK -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has pushed for more civility in this year's presidential race, is warning that the biting, angry attack on Sen. John Kerry by a fellow Democrat at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night might harm President Bush's efforts to woo swing voters.

McCain said the keynote address by Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) could prove as controversial as a speech by Patrick Buchanan at the 1992 GOP convention in Houston.

"I think it backfires," McCain said of Miller's rhetorical assault on Kerry. He added that it "makes Buchanan's speech look milquetoast."

McCain made his comments to reporters at a party he held after the convention's Wednesday session ended.

Buchanan's speech, in which he declared a "culture war" was under way in America, was thought by many Republicans to have hurt the re-election bid of Bush's father, then-President George H.W. Bush. The elder Bush lost the November vote to Democrat Bill Clinton.

[cilbupeR_eerF]

"....milquetoast."

Say what, McLame? Somehow I think that if McCain was President and terrorists kidnapped our schoolchildren, that McCain would be handing the police straws and spitballs. Just so they wouldn't offend the sensibilities and calmness of the media and the poor distraught Islamic freedom fighters.

[epow]

Zell Miller cleared the air for EVERY CONFUSED DEMOCRATS out there who dispises what the dem party has become and want to shout out against this hijacking by the immature crowd of 60's hippies who never grew up and to this day do not understand that freedom is NEVER free.(emphasis added)

Bravo! (applause and whistles here) My thoughts exactly.

[epow]

Government employees, especialy career govt. employees, have an entirely different perspective of "real life"..............Just my 0.2 cents....

And 2 cents well spent.

I have worked on projects alongside government employees myself, and I can confirm everything you say about them. Thanks to civil service laws that virtually guarantee lifetime jobs, many of them have no concept of the real everyday world where incompetence and indolence can actually get a person fired.

BTW, thanks for your service in our nation's behalf.

[wasp69]

Hey, Johnny, shut the f@#k up!

[shhrubbery!]

[McCain 'warns' that Miller's speech] might harm President Bush's efforts to woo swing voters

Not if Frank Luntz's focus group of Ohio 'swing' voters is any indication.

When asked if they approved of Miller's speech, swing voters in that group overwhelmingly responded 'yes.'

When asked if they were more inclined to vote for Bush/Cheney after Miller's speech, 11 out of 17 said 'yes.'

Small sample, sure, but that's almost a 2:1 ratio.

McCain is 'out of touch.'

[Reagan is King]

Please tell me that this boob won't make it onto a Republican ticket in '08.

[epow]

lit the match in the party of Truman, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower.

Uhh, this has probably been pointed out already further down the thread, but just in case it hasn't, Ike was Republican.

I remember the '52 campaign quite well even though I was too young to vote. In the GOP primaries Ike represented the moderate wing and Taft represented the old line conservative wing. I preferred Taft, but I believed Ike was the only Republican at that time who could defeat a Fair Deal Democrat like Stevenson.

I was just ecstatic that the 20 year string of Democrat administrations was finally over, and for the first time in my 16 year life I would see a Republican in the White House. OTOH my rabidly Democrat parents thought the end of western civilization was near at hand.

[epow]

Please tell me that this boob won't make it onto a Republican ticket in '08.

I wish I could do that, but I can't. At this point I am very much afraid we will have to choose between McCain, Giuliani, and Pataki, as it is quite obvious that all three are already running.

If those are the only choices we are offered I may just sit that one out. I don't have much preference if it comes down to a race between RINOs, although almost anyone would be preferable to McCain. I believe he would probably be the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office.

[Hildy]

I've never seen someone who plays both sides of the fence like McCain. In my opinion he wants to be a Republican, but needs the attention and adoration of the Press so badly. It's really sad and why Bush is such the better man.

[Nick Danger]

McCain is totally nuts.

I keep going back-and-forth on McCain. Here's why: when he denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, my first thought was, "Thank you John McCain." That's because I knew it meant the beginning of coverage of the Swifties by the leftstream media... which up to then had been totally ignoring them, even though half the country was talking about the ads.

They would never print anything about the Swifties, but I knew they would jump at the chance to blow the horns for McCain's denunciation of them. And sure enough, the very first thing a lot of people heard about the Swifties was that McCain had denounced them. The media could not print that one fast enough, even though they had not previously bothered to tell their readership that the Swifties even existed.

Traffic on the Swifties' web site, and contributions to the Swifties, jumped that day, and jumped more the next day. People wanted to go see this horrible ad for themselves, to find out what all the commotion was about.

Kerry and the Democrats in the media got tons of mileage out of the McCain quote, but I don't think it helped anyone as much as it helped the Swifties. There really is no such thing as bad publicity.

But I figured that was an accident. I figured McCain was being his usual loudmouthed self, and any good the Swifties got out of it was in spite of him.

But this lastest one makes me pause. As we all know, the Zell Miller speech was, umm, "under reported" by the Democratic press. I'm sure that many people who read a newspaper, but did not watch the convention, do not even know the speech occurred.

Well, here comes McCain again with another denunciation. This the media will print. As they did with the Swifties, the Democats who pose as our "journalists" will publicize the denunciation of something they never reported in the first place.

Is it possible that McCain is playing these guys like a harp? Is he giving them an angle that they will write about, on a subject that they otherwise will not write about at all? I don't know if he's that smart. But this is the second time that he has denounced something that the media had chosen to spike, and as a consequence got it into the press.

[U S Army EOD]

I will be in DC on 12 September at the Capital steps.

[Edit35]

McCain's butt-crack must really be hurtin' right about now from his pathetic attempt to straddle the fence.

I bet he's got a bad case of "splinters in the sphincter."

[the Deejay]

McCain can blow it out his arse.
He's the flip-flopper of the RNC.

[Legion04]

What is it with these guys with the name John?

[John Lenin]

I'm getting tired of this egotist who only gets facetime because he mocks a lot of conservative values.

[NYCVirago]

No, Democrat Zell Miller's attack on Kerry isn't going to hurt Bush. Democrats just wish that were true.

I saw this in another article about Zell. Schoen has explained why the libs are so irate over the speech:

Doug Schoen, a pollster for President Bill Clinton, said the Miller speech was effective, since "it is keeping the focus on Kerry" and is preventing the nominee from changing the subject to more promising topics, such as his agenda or his critique of Bush. "If this election is a debate about John Kerry" and his war service or national security record, Schoen said, "he's not going to win."

[ninenot]

Buchanan's speech, in which he declared a "culture war" was under way in America, was thought by many Republicans to have hurt the re-election bid of Bush's father, then-President George H.W. Bush. The elder Bush lost the November vote to Democrat Bill Clinton.

This foofoodust is DIRECTLY out of the Log Cabin Republican playbook.