Posted on 09/03/2004 4:52:04 AM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
1) There are Keating 5 facts we don't yet know.
2) Democrat Senators DO know those facts.
3) Whenever said Democrats need a favor from McCain, they call up his office and remind him that they know.
Ah, yes. The old fantasy that it was not Ross Perot's candidacy or President Bush's going back on the tax pledge that lost the election - it was a speech by Pat Buchanan that opposed special rights for sodomites and praised our soldiers for keeping order during the LA riots.
OK.
All those "gay rights" activists and LA looters who were originally solidly in the Bush column went unexpectedly Democrat apparently.
Give me a break.
Didn't know one could perform that sort of activity in a 'corner.'
Thought it took a flat surface or at least a chair.
LOL
Good God! When are we going to be rid of this man? You know what - I HOPE HE SWITCHES PARTY! He is more hurtful from within than out!
Do not be alarmed by the sounds you are hearing, they are merely shrill whines naturally created by the blowing of the strong wind of truth across spines of rubber!
I dunno about that.
PJB says "we are in a culture war" and the next thing you know, the southern border of the country is out of control, the Mass. Supremes declare that "gay marriage" MUST be allowed, the US Supremes re-confirm abortion on demand, including partial-birth abortion, and the US Supremes also declare that sodomy is perfectly acceptable in Texas despite the Constitution's clear preference for State's rights.
So PJB and Miller both tell the truth.
Conclusion: the Presstitutes in the MSM hate the truth.
That's what it is, IMHO.
After McCain spoke, he was the focus of attention, great speech, etc.
Miller upstaged him, moved the spot-light away from him, and he got jealous.
Really needs to be in the centre of it all.
Fair enough, I will.
The MSM pundits lie because they reserve a special hatred and fear for anyone who is on the right side of the cultural war.
Oh, I know they do.
OK, I just re-read the speech, so let me re-phrase my comments.
Buchanan gave the wrong kind of speech for the convention. It was straight to the point, and most conservatives would agree with the points he made.
It was the kind of speech you make to the Republican base, not to the country as a whole, because it is very abrasive, very "in their face", and is a turn-off to moderates, who don't react well to such strong language. And it made the Repubs look bad, and it cost them.
Exactly! I'm really sick of this "hating gays" nonsense.
For thousands of years people generally left gays alone. Were gays ever mentioned, even tangentially, at any major party political convention until recent years? No, because gays kept their perversion to themselves, and no one else paid a bit of attention to them.
But in recent years, gays have demanded that our entire society bow and scrape before them, change our cherished institutions to meet their demands, subject our children to their indoctrination, subjugate our religious faith to their perversion, and give up our freedoms so that they may have more of their own. If we object, then we're accused of "hating gays".
Pat Buchanan has done some things I don't care for, but it's a bum rap to say his speech was about "hating gays". It's the gay activists who are the haters.
As for McCain, he needs to seek mental counseling for his obsessive need to be suckled like a little baby by the media.
Hey McCain, shut the hell up!
If I recall correctly, viewers responded favorably to Buchanan's speech. It only hurt the GOP because people who didn't see it heard the media spin that it was a speech filled with hate, intolerance, etc.
The old media are now trying to do the same with Zell's speech. Hopefully, with all the new media, it won't work this time.
He's just upset that the MSM isn't talking about his speech.
Media Whore.
Well, if anyone would recognize milquetoast...
He has been out in the sun too long!
The convention is the place where the parties formally "introduce" the candidate to the American people. It's the point where they ask that 30% of voters in the middle to vote for their candidate.
Fire and brimstone is fine when you're trying to solidify the base, but it doesn't play well with that large mass of basically non-political Americans who only vote once every 4 years, and who just want to think of themselves as "nice people".
My reaction to Buchanan's speech wasn't based on MSM's descriptions of it, I saw it. And I'm in no way, shape or form gonna support the Democratic candidate, but my reaction was that it came across too hard-line to play well with the moderates.
Of course, Bush 1 lost because he pissed off his base by signing that tax increase, and some of them just stayed home. But don't diminish the power of the middle of the political spectrum, gentlemen, they are the ones who usually swing the vote one way or another.
[And to get back to the original issue, I don't see Zell's speech as being in the same camp, since he is a Democrat.]
My wife's been a Dem all her life (leaning libertarian these days thanks to my steady influence), and she was quite impressed and moved by Zell's speech and his invocation of freedom.
When she observed that Zell was burning bridges in his party, I pointed out that Kerry, Kennedy, Feinstein, and their ilk are the ones who poured the gasoline and lit the match in the party of Truman, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. She clearly saw my point.
She may not vote for Bush, but I doubt she'll be voting for Kerry, and that's saying something - she was a thoroughly indoctrinated Dem who wept when Reagan was elected in her high school years.
Backfire? McCain is off his rocker.
This is a man that served under Eisenhower.
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