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The Lowest Blow
NY Times ^ | October 18, 2004 | WILLIAM SAFIRE

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?"


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: cheney; gwb2004; homosexuality; kerry; lowblow; mary; marycheney; privacy; safire; thirddebate
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To: Ursus arctos horribilis

As far as mugs go, she was born that way, like horseface. I guess she's trying to compensate. Thanks for the link.


61 posted on 10/17/2004 10:34:04 PM PDT by neverdem (Xin loi min oi)
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To: uncleshag

LOL Her cardiologist named his boat after her.


62 posted on 10/18/2004 2:08:53 AM PDT by SirLurkedalot (I'll turn in my guns when Jesus comes to collect them. In the meantime....)
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To: neverdem

I'm surprised Saffire didn't explain that.


63 posted on 10/18/2004 3:32:06 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
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To: ladyinred

My grandfather taught me to smoke when I was 8. I loved that old man. My motheer didn't.


64 posted on 10/18/2004 4:55:02 AM PDT by cajungirl (Jammies Up!!)
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To: SquirrelKing

My grandpa was a carpenter. He built houses, stores and banks...


65 posted on 10/18/2004 5:10:34 AM PDT by Hatteras
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To: neverdem

Bob Novak wrote about this today also. It's at:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak18.html

Glad to see this one still has legs.


66 posted on 10/18/2004 5:52:22 AM PDT by jackbill
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To: MHT
McCarthy was the godfather of Bobby Kennedy's firstborn.

Cool! I did not know that.

67 posted on 10/18/2004 6:14:24 AM PDT by RadioAstronomer
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To: neverdem
Thank you for posting this. I hope everyone here will read it. We know everyone in Washington and New York will. The New York Times is gospel, dontcha know.

For several days, many of us have noticed and noted how John Kerry will quote The New York Times. He does it to validate a point. He did it in the debate, when he was discussing his own healthcare plan. He turned to Bush and said "two major news organizations" agree with me. Remember Bush made a joke about that.

Yesterday, Bob Shrum and Joe Lockhart both quoted an unnamed source in The New York Times, who said Bush had told a group of fatcat supporters that he had a secret plan for ending social security.

Well dearhearts, I bet this is one New York Times article John Kerry won't be quoting!

68 posted on 10/18/2004 6:55:01 AM PDT by YaYa123 (@Kerry/Edwards = Wrong On Simply Everything.com)
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