Posted on 10/17/2004 8:44:37 PM PDT by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Washington — The memoir about the Kerry-Edwards campaign that will be the best seller will reveal the debate rehearsal aimed at focusing national attention on the fact that Vice President Cheney has a daughter who is a lesbian.
That this twice-delivered low blow was deliberate is indisputable. The first shot was taken by John Edwards, seizing a moderator's opening to smarmily compliment the Cheneys for loving their openly gay daughter, Mary. The vice president thanked him and yielded the remaining 80 seconds of his time; obviously it was not a diversion he was willing to prolong.
Until that moment, only political junkies knew that a member of the Cheney family serving on the campaign staff was homosexual. The vice president, to show it was no secret or anything his family was ashamed of, had referred to it briefly twice this year, but the press - respecting family privacy - had properly not made it a big deal. The percentage of voters aware of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was tiny.
But an opening seized upon by Edwards in the vice-presidential debate raised that percentage. Because Cheney refused to react and the media did not see the spotlight on lesbianism as part of a political plan, the opening shot worked.
Emboldened, members of Kerry's debate preparation team made Mary Cheney's private life the centerpiece of their answer to the question, especially worrisome to them, about same-sex marriage. Kerry was prepped to insert her sexuality into his rehearsed answer: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian. ..."
But in this second time around, the gratuitous insertion of Cheney's daughter into an answer slipping around a hot-button social issue revealed that it was part of a deliberate Kerry campaign strategy.
One purpose was to drive a wedge between the Republican running mates. President Bush supports a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a union of a man and a woman; Cheney has long been on record favoring state option, but always adds that the president sets administration policy. That rare divergence of views is hardly embarrassing.
The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as "soft on same-sex" as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency's eagerness to go to the polls.
The pro-Kerry columnist Margaret Carlson put her finger on it, finding that Kerry and Edwards "realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently aren't trying to convert or cure." (Italics mine.)
After the outspoken Lynne Cheney blasted this unsought intrusion of her daughter's private life as "a cheap and tawdry trick," the Kerry campaign hustled forward John Edwards's wife to charge that such motherly outrage "indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences."
Worse than insensitive, that shot was off message, peeling the veneer off the Kerry-Edwards justification for making Mary famous: their oleaginous claim that, gee, they were only complimenting Dick Cheney for his fatherly tolerance. The crusher to that pretense came when the Kerry campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, coolly announced that the Cheney daughter was "fair game."
Apparently the American public thinks otherwise about the campaigning children of candidates. When polls showed two-to-one disapproval of the calculated Kerry-Edwards abuse of the young woman's privacy, the Democratic strategists who concocted this base-suppressing dirty trick orchestrated a defense that it was Dick Cheney who "outed" his daughter months ago. They are advising Kerry that he would look weak or, worse, slyly manipulative were he to apologize for tagging the Cheneys with the word "lesbian" before 50 million viewers.
Kerry will, I hope, assert his essential decency by apologizing with sincerity. Other Republicans hope he will let his self-inflicted wound fester. They have in mind a TV spot using an old film clip of a Boston lawyer named Welch at a Congressional hearing, saying "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
Along with President Nixon, Senator Eugene Joseph McCarthy and my grandmother were great friends.
To the Mary Cheney issue add Edwards' "arise and walk" clip re Reeves and stem cells.
I'm sure we could think of others... so have at it!
Good. Looks like Safire has woken up and decided to write a useful column.
Cool. My grandfather was friends with Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.
Way cool! :-)
This is in the NY Times? I'm shocked! It must be buried way in the back right? Good Article.
Truer words were never spoken. It was a blatant attempt by all involved Kerry Kampaign Workers to hang pink triangles around the necks of the President and VP.
Kerry has no decency. Makes it better for Bush's campaign of course. But the man hasn't the sense to apologize and he certainly doesn't have the sincerity to pull it off.
The dummycrats keep saying "But its alright, because VP Cheney thanked Edwards, graciously afterwards..."
***** I BEG YOUR PARDON?
What else was Dick Cheney supposed to do? Turn around and punch the daylights outta Edwards? (I wish...)
Dream on, Bill. Keep the chest going in and out.
The OpEd columns are usually on inside of the last page, the last time I looked.
Kerry and the Democrats are so sleazy that if they thought it would get him any votes, they'd run an ad saying that Bush told a close group of friends that God was dead.
devastating column for Kerry, from Safire....and spot on, well mostly spot on..... that's a wrap folks... I think this one is in the bag.
God Bless Vice President Cheney and his wonderful family. Mary should never have been brought up. Whatever personal family issues are, I think they are off limits.
That this issue was brought up shows the dysfunction of the democrat party that I left.
"Kerry will, I hope, assert his essential decency by apologizing with sincerity."
Like most Democrats, Kerry has no "essential decency" nor does he have sincerity.
I think Mrs. Edwards is use to saying whatever she wants and not being held accountable. She is arrogant and mean.
Hard to believe this was allowed to be printed on the pages of the New York Slimes.
I believe Sen. Eugene Joseph McCarthy was Eugene McCarthy, the antiwar presidential candidate from Minnesota called "Clean Gene". I think you meant to refer to Joseph McCarthy (no Eugene), the senator from Wisconsin.
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