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?"
LOL! Would love to be a fly on the wall!
LOL
Mine raised minnows in the backyard because he liked to fish.
What was this thread about now? :-)
I like seeing that this was in the NYSlimes.
I've heard this line of argument stated a number of times in slightly different ways but I don't quite buy it.
This battle has been for the undecided voters for quite some time. The way I look at it, Sen. Spitball is basically assuming that most undecided voters are homophobic.
President Bush's core constituency is informed enough to know that John Kerry is the one to worry about when it comes to legalizing marriage between people who engage in homosexual acts. Undecided voters are not.
A caller to his show tonight made an excellent point about Kerry's comment:
Suppose the moderator of the debate had asked the two candidates a question about the growing problem of obesity in the United States, and President Bush had said something to this effect: "We should ask the wife of my opponent's running mate about this -- 'cause she's 'bout as big as a house, ain't she?"
> Kerry will, I hope, assert his essential decency
> by apologizing with sincerity.
This is not going to happen.
Kerry is psychologically incapable of apology,
about anything.
Further, he incapable of sincerity as well,
and his acting skills are inadequate to fake it.
***** I BEG YOUR PARDON?
What else was Dick Cheney supposed to do? Turn around and punch the daylights outta Edwards? (I wish...)
John Edwards was on Fox News (I think) Friday explaining that Cheney had thanked him after his (Edwards') bringing up the subject. Either way it's interpreted, Edwards loses: 1) he's clueless about important social clues or 2) he's lying and devious.
He's a WW II Vet that didn't much care for the French he'd met.
Ms. Edwards is very lucky that W didn't associate her with a serious over-eating disorder when he answered questions recently about health care.
Such is my hope.
Safire stated that two-thirds of those polled think that
what Kerry did was wrong. That compares with what I have
seen. However, I believe that, in fact, more than 80% of
Americans likely think that a political stunt of this nature
is generally a rotten thing to do. I would submit that the
reason why the poll revealed only a two to one result is
that many Democrats are willing to let this crap slide
when it is a Democrat candidate doing the sliming.
I've sat in a lounge chair with a beer in one hand and my fishin pole in the other
while fishin in my backyard swimmin pool.
(Special lure with hooks removed so as to not damage the pool while not
catching the non existing fish.)
Drove the neighbors nuts.
Well after all...we're talking about John (This is NOT a good man) Kerry./
Sgt,
Yes Sir!
W knows that a farmer somewhere would go under if she cut her meals by only half.
She gets Christmas and birthday cards from her local Mickey D's.
Mightly unfortunate title considering the content.
Kerry is not a good man.
I was too. Her sleazy pseudopsychological diagnosis of "ashamed" was offensive to everyone, including liberal psychologists and watchers of Oprah. I'll bet TeRAYza sends her a nice big bowl of raisins and gin to help her get over her stupid lowlife gaffe.
I was too. Her sleazy pseudopsychological diagnosis of "ashamed" was offensive to everyone, including liberal psychologists and watchers of Oprah. I'll bet TeRAYza sends her a nice big bowl of raisins and gin to help her get over her stupid lowlife gaffe.
I sort of wish Cheney had just sat there for .. oh, say, 30 seconds or so, staring at Edwards. Then, just said something like, "I can't believe you said that." And then to Lehrer, "next question."
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