Posted on 09/04/2004 9:33:49 AM PDT by harrycarey
A Kitty Surprise? ROGER SIMON COLUMN SEPTEMBER 1, 2004
NEW YORK - - Republican insiders have been huddling in small groups at the Republican Convention this week and talking about what worries them most. It is not John Kerry. It is not the unemployment numbers. It is not Iraq.
It is Kitty Kelley.
Kelley has a new book coming out in a few weeks titled "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” and it is rumored to be explosive.
One source tells me there are “at least five bombshells” contained in it and another source says there is allegedly new material on President Bush’s service in the Air National Guard.
Democrats have long been worried about a Republican “October Surprise” such as the capture of Osama bin Laden. But now some Republicans are worried that Kelley’s book will be the equivalent of an October surprise and harmful to President Bush’s re-election hopes.
Why are GOP operatives taking such a book seriously? After all, some critics have dismissed Kelley’s previous books as the equivalent of tabloid journalism. But in November 2000, the Bush campaign’s internal polling showed that revelations about Bush’s 1976 arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol damaged him badly with religious conservatives and some analysts believe it cost him a popular vote victory.
So this time, Bush operatives don’t want any more big surprises, revelations, rumors or gossip to make a media splash just weeks before the election.
Which is why they are so nervous. According to the Associated Press, the Kelley opus - - it is supposed to be around 700 pages long - - is being billed as "the book the Bushes don't want you to read,” it has a first printing of 600,000 and “a virtual guarantee to annoy, if not embarrass, Bush supporters.”
In the past, Kelley has written books about Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra and the British Royal Family among others and her books have often contained explosive material. Kelley’s facts are sometimes challenged, but her books tend to make a big splash nonetheless.
Kelley’s 1991 book on Nancy Reagan, for example, which contained scandalous accusations, was the subject of a front page story in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd.
“Ms. Kelley has developed a reputation as a giant killer for her sensational books about the rich and famous,” Dowd wrote. “She wrote that Jacqueline Kennedy had shock treatments; that President John F. Kennedy's retarded sister, Rosemary, had a lobotomy, and that Frank Sinatra's mother was a New Jersey abortionist.”
Dowd went on: “Ms. Kelley asserts that Mrs. Reagan will go down in history as the cold and glittering icon for a morally vacuous era. The author says the former First Lady reinvented herself with a tissue of fabrications about her background, age and family, just as her free-spirited mother did before her; that she had her nose fixed and her eyes lifted; that both the Reagans had extramarital affairs, and that Mrs. Reagan had a long-term affair with Frank Sinatra.”
The article quoted Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan's former press secretary, as saying that "no friend of Nancy Reagan's is going to read that scummy book."
Perhaps, but plenty of other people did read it and many more read about it. And this, remember, was in an era before 24-hour cable TV and media with an insatiable appetite for news, gossip, rumor, innuendo or whatever they can get.
It may turn out, of course, that Kelley’s new book contains nothing damaging to President Bush.
But with their convention going so well, Republicans have to find something to worry about this week.
Do these dolts actually think (sane) people will believe it??
I'm with the folks who say that it will mean more votes for our very heterosexual President in November.
Perhaps her and pat buchanan can go on a book tour together.
At the time, that campaign was considered one of the dirtiest in American history. It was Republican James G. Blaine vs. Democrat Cleveland.
Republicans:
Democrats:
If they could only see how low people are now willing to go in order to smear the opposition.
Good grief. A national press which hates GWB with a passion, and it takes one Kitty Kelly to unearth all of these wildly sensational claims against the Bush family, with not even a hint of any of it ever coming out before.
Exactly how stupid do these people think we are?
It is not how stupid they think we are... it is how stupid they are. They do not know what it takes to win a presidential election.
Presidential elections are won on the candidate's answer to the following question.
What will you do as president that will make my life better and more secure?
The candidate with the best answer to that question always wins...
Here's a hint: She made it up.
[heavy sarc]
Ha ha ha ha ha!
In the Presidential brother sweepstakes, Neil Bush must compete with:
Roger (I-gots-something-white-on-my-nostril) Clinton!
Hugh (executive pardons-for-sale-or-rent) Rodham...oh wait-brother in law there!
Billy (scratch my back Muammar Qadaffi) Carter!
Just wondering.
Do you recall Clinton's attorney was also attorney for the National Enquirer?
And WHO planned for Gore to win, while they ran things from behind the scenes?
Should this editor Stevens be added to the arkancide list?
So9
Oh, dear, this is a lovely campaign we're having this year, isn't it?
"Kitty Kelly will save us!" That's what it boils down to. these people are beyond pathetic; they have lost their damn minds.
The Kerry train wreck is really getting desperate for dirt.
"How much you fellas/ladies want to bet that there will be plenty of copies of this book around, in stark contrast to Unfit For Command."
I went to Barnes & Ignoble yesterday, didn't see one.
Asked, they said - backordered, they sell as fast as they come in... there's a waiting list.
Regnery needs to get their act together!!!
Her silence may be a requirement of the divorce settlement, so she'd have to give her information over without any official recognition. Of course, if that could be proven, she'd regret it.
Oh, wasn't it Kitty who mused that Nancy Reagan would be relegated to the ash heap of history, along with her husband?
I went to a Borders in a more liberal part of town yesterday, and they had tons of them.
I don't know if the book actually contains these particular rumors; it's only what's posted on some blog in Colombia, of all places. At any rate, I wouldn't trust anything Kitty Kelley says, although the media will sure make an effort to spread anything she spews.
Ellen's delusional. Flynt's book was released two months ago, and it's been greeted with a resounding yawn.
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