Posted on 09/10/2004 3:31:13 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Dick Morris
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
President Bush enters September with a remarkable double-digit lead as a result of one of the most successful conventions in recent years. The key to the GOP success was, of course, its focus on terrorism, reminding Americans what a dangerous world we inhabit. The Republicans also moved to the center, featuring pro-choice and socially moderate orators like Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Zell Miller and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Democrats don't understand the need to move to the center. Bob Shrum, Kerry's – and Ted Kennedy's – key strategist, makes his living by appealing to the party's base. The addition of James Carville and Paul Begala to the team just reinforces the tendency to tack to the left, embracing an economic populism that resonates with 40 percent of the voters but leaves the rest cold.
After all, when Clinton needed to win 43 percent of the vote to get elected in 1992 against Bush, as Ross Perot split the Republican vote, he relied on Carville and Begala. But when he needed to win half the voters in the 1996 campaign, as Perot's appeal diminished, they were nowhere to be seen.
Carville and Begala will likely focus on "the economy, stupid," which is a needed correction for Kerry – whose current strategy of trying to beat Bush on terrorism brings to mind Winston Churchill's characterization of fighting a land war in Asia against Japan in World War II: "Going into the water to fight the shark."
But in its focus on the economy, the Kerry team is likely to lose sight of one basic problem: In running against a bad economy, it is helpful if the economy is bad. With an unemployment rate approaching 5 percent, they'll have a hard time making the case.
The decision to bring in Carville and Begala also begs a more fundamental question: Do they want Kerry to win?
Both men are primarily loyal to the Clintons – Bill and Hillary. Clearly, the former president would like the former first lady to be president in 2008. And a Kerry victory would stand in the way.
An axiom of politics is that generally you want your campaign advisers to hope that you win – and Carville and Begala may not pass that standard.
Bush's post convention bounce is likely to linger until the debates. He will get another boost this weekend as we mark the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, reminding Americans, once more, how important it is to keep Bush at the helm.
How big is Bush's lead? Don't believe the surveys that show it in the 5- to 7-point range. Believe the surveys of Time and Newsweek, which show a lead in excess of 10 points.
The difference is because pollsters disagree about whether or not to weight their results to keep constant the ratio of Republicans, Democrats and Independents in their sample. Some polling firms treat party affiliation as a demographic constant and, when they find that their sample has too many Republicans, they weight down each Republican interview and assign an extra weight to each Democratic response.
But other polling firms – and I – disagree. We feel that political party is not a demographic, like gender or race or age. If the survey finds more Republicans than usual, we think it's because the country has become more Republican, so we treat the result as a indicator of national mood, not of statistical error.
Time and Newsweek both picked up major moves toward the GOP in the wake of the convention. Likely the other firms did too, but they treated the finding as a mistake and weighed down the Republican interviews, making the race appear to be closer than it really is.
The debates are likely to help Bush, since Kerry's supporters are so divided on the war and on terrorism. Almost whatever Kerry says is likely to lose him a share of his voters. For example, 37 percent of his supporters told the Rasmussen Poll that they want America to give priority to making democracy work in Iraq, while 54 percent want Kerry to emphasize troop withdrawal. So when Kerry said Monday that he'd prioritize bringing the troops home, his comments appealed to the majority of his voters but alienated more than a third of them. The debates are fraught with such traps.
So look for September to be a good Bush month. But, in October, Kerry will close at least part of the gap. Democrats always do.
Don't fly into Martha's Vineyard at night....
One word is all that's necessary to refute that: Lautenberg.
It is much easier to throw sand into a gearbox than it is to clean it, oil it and bring it to optimum working condition.
So it is that Clinton finds it child's play to go through the overt and well-publicized motions of assisting Kerry by lending him his crack team of crackpots. But all their ostensibly good work can so easily be counteracted by the placement of a juicy FBI-file tidbit into Clinton's sycophantic press outlets. "Gee...where did that come from?"...the bozos in the rest of the MSM will say.
So let's give the Clintons' credit for a ridiculously easy strategy.
Also, keep in mind that the pollsters are asking people to state their political affiliation. It is one thing to go down and change your registration and a completely 'nuther thing to lie to a pollster.
When the Democrats do stupid, embarrassing things like nominating an complete and utter loser, who is a glory hound and nasty to boot, it is not surprising that a certain segment of the population would be embarrassed to put a (D) behind their names. Add to this the incompetent forgeries flying around now, and this number can only be expected to rise.
If the Democrats would stop screwing up so badly, these people would go back to the (D) tomorrow. Fortunately for the (R)s, this is not likely...
If I were John F'n Kerry, I would ditch the plane and stick to taking the bus...
So Dick Morris indicates SMART republicans move toward the center thereby TRICKing undecideds to vote for their agenda... OR are republicans actually moving toward the center. The center meaning: what democrats used to be.. In that case many republicans are becomeing more democrat.. which is a win win for democrats.. Lowering the bar of conservatism makes it easier for socialists to become conservatives it seems.. Whos winning here ?.. Conservatives in a socialist paradigm are still socialist it then makes the hard left communists.. which are socialists also.. Must be I've become a redical.. for I'm for redical change not incremental moves from the LEFT...
Not THIS time, Dick, that's where the October surprise lurks.
To read later.
That's right. As I recall the NJ Supreme Court ruled essentially that they didn't care what the law was, it wasn't "fair" that the Democratic Party be represented by a candidate who had no chance of winning.
It would be no surprise, since the MSM is the PR arm of the Democratic Party, if the same sort of thing was foisted on the public on a national level to the delight of the smirking crowd, if it came to that.
sKerry would probably plunge into a sudden deep depression and commit "Arkansas-suicide" to clear the way though. I don't think his big head would allow him to step aside voluntarily...afterall, he is more important than anything else.
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