Posted on 09/05/2004 11:40:25 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
September 6, 2004 -- WASHINGTON The long knives are out for Democrat John Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, as infighting rages while his slumping campaign struggles to come back against President Bush. "You'd think they could find a man to throw overboard one of these days," zinged Republican strategist Mary Matalin, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press."
She said Democrats blamed 1988 loser Michael Dukakis' stumbles on campaign manager Susan Estrich and Al Gore's 2000 fumbles on campaign chief Donna Brazile, and "now they're trying to blame poor Mary Beth Cahill" for Kerry's missteps.
Cahill was fingered as the chief scapegoat in a leak to Newsweek magazine, which claimed a "furious" Kerry railed at her for failing to answer attacks on his Vietnam record.
For days, "Kerry ripped into Cahill" over TV ad attacks from anti-Kerry Vietnam vets, and then he "screamed" for someone to call old pal Thomas Vallely, who'd helped defend him before, Newsweek said.
Asked yesterday if Kerry waited too long to hit back, Cahill told CBS, "We answered it on our own time."
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The infighting came as Time and Newsweek polls gave Bush an 11-point lead. Kerry aides concede Bush leads by at least 3 or 4 points.
Kerry took yesterday off instead of going on a Sunday TV show to jumpstart his campaign. He's done no interviews in more than a month, since the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth TV ads challenged his Vietnam and anti-war record.
Instead, to try to shift to offense, Kerry yesterday put out a statement suggesting a possible Bush cover-up of ties between the Saudi government and 9/11.
Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel called the claim "baseless" and suggested Kerry has hired Michael Moore as his "new foreign-policy adviser."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
They must not have read the 9/11 report.
No, sKerry's against that too. Especially since it's gonna go on "during wartime" and is a "waste of Pentagon resources and time".
The parts in quotes are from the sKerry Campaign. I noted that in the campaigns statement about the Navy Department's investigation sKerry and his pit of vipers he calls a campaign staff never said that the Navy shouldn't because there's no truth to the allegations.
Once again, Team Kerry is taking a serious misstep. They should welcome the investigation and agree to cooperate fully with it. Instead, they make themselves look guilty by criticizing it and charging that it's a waste of taxpayer money.
The French have an expression for this which Kerry would understand: cherchez la femme.
LOLOLOLOLOL
He's afraid to show his head in a one on one with journalists, 'cause the SBVT are marksmen the likes of which he hasn't seen.
Mark my words, when this guy loses he will give a vituperative concession speech the likes of which History has never seen.
I want this guy fully pulverized, nobody deserves a world-class evisercation more than he does. Nobody!
Sad thing for MBC is that she and ol' what-his-name were right, if scary Kerry had just ignored the SBVs, the media would have just written them off as a bunch of cranks. It was his little hissy fit outburst against them that made people look up and pay attention to what the vets had to say.
LOL, that guy is such a goober.
In 1992, President Bush named her the deputy campaign manager for political operations. As deputy campaign manager, she was responsible for the overview and organization of all 50 state operations. As the on-board planner who traveled with President Bush throughout the 1992 campaign, she emerged as the vocal, and occasionally controversial, defender of the president and his policies.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I meant she was not part of this current campaign in any official capacity.
I couldn't care less what she did 14 years ago. It doesn't pertain to this election or this article which is what we were discussing.
I didn't doubt her involvment in the elder Bush's campaign.
She's not in a powerful position to "ruin this one". I thought our discussion was regarding the present.
I apologize if I misunderstood the topic at hand.
You seem a little hypersensitive about Mary Matalin. If it was my call, I wouldn't let anybody married to a RAT operative like Carville anywhere near my campaign.
I keep screeching about the number of days this guy takes off.
IF Bush, or any other pubbie took this many days off the campaign trail, the press would have a field day with it.
As it is, they are SILENT as they run up their expense accounts while hanging out in Nantucket, or whichever other luxury location kerry happens to infest, oops, inhabit.
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