Posted on 08/03/2004 6:27:18 PM PDT by Las Vegas Dave
Font size=5> ANTI-KERRY VETS GATHER FOR ASSAULT; BOOK CLAIMS KERRY WAR 'FABRICATIONS'
Hillary maybe running after all cauz I think Kerry might be toast!!!!!
D
And here's the fun part--assume for a second the book is sloppy and/or false.
GWB faithfully leads our nation through the 9/11 national nightmare. Moore falsely accuses him of being a traitor who helped 9/11 along.
John Kerry swears under oath that he committed war crimes. O'Neill and the swift boat vets "confirm" it for him. What's he going to say, "No, I didn't really do that, I lied to the Senate while our troops were under fire and O'Neill knows it! I'm not a war criminal, I'm a traitor! Vote for me, dammit!"
Talk about some instant karma...
That legislative record left Kerry vulnerable when Weld, the popular Republican governor, came calling for Kerry's Senate seat in 1996.
In his first two Senate campaigns, Kerry had walked over fairly light Republican opposition, millionaire businessmen Raymond Shamie in 1984 and Rappaport in 1990. He'd dispatched Shamie by painting him as a conservative extremist. Rappaport's challenge was waylaid by Kerry's clever television ads that ridiculed the Republican's past residency in Hawaii and questioned his business dealings.
There would be no easy route around Weld. Despite the state's lopsided Democratic voter registration advantage, Weld had been reelected in 1994 in a historic landslide, burying state Representative Mark Roosevelt with nearly 71 percent of the vote.
Kerry's equal or better in lineage, education, and resume, Weld was now restless in his State House office. Like Kerry, he had presidential aspirations. Like Kerry, he saw a path to the White House running through the seat of the state's junior senator.
It was a campaign for the ages, the marquee Senate contest in the country. A pair of heavyweights, they slugged it out in seven memorable debates on statewide television. They argued about every issue imaginable, trying to magnify small differences as they grappled for the political center.
Weld rolled out the platform that had served him well in state elections: reform welfare, be tougher on criminals, and cut taxes. Kerry staked out Democratic positions on health insurance for children, investments in education, and better job-training programs.
Kerry, however, was suffering defections by some Bay State Democratic officials. Others did little to help him. After Kerry's 12 years in Washington, some said he was a stranger, a remote figure who courted them at election time.
The candidates made a personal pledge to each other to abide by a cap on overall spending and media costs. They also agreed not to spend more than $500,000 in personal wealth. But in the final weeks, with Weld outspending Kerry, the incumbent blew off the cap, mortgaged the Beacon Hill townhouse he jointly owned with his wife, and poured $1.7 million into his campaign kitty. He claimed Weld was buying more media time than their agreement allowed, but there was scant evidence to back that up.
As Election Day neared, some polls had Weld closing on his opponent. But Kerry, say his campaign operatives, always performs worst when he is cautiously nursing a lead, best when in danger.
Kerry turned out swift boat crewmen, his Navy superiors, and even retired admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. at Charlestown Navy Yard to sing his praises. Ted Kennedy, too, stepped in. The senior senator co-wrote legislation with Kerry to ensure that all children were covered by health insurance, a program to be financed by a cigarette tax. Kennedy's staff helped Kerry draft the bill and gave it to him to announce just a month before the election. Kerry used the issue in his ads and speeches as a cudgel against Weld, who had vetoed a similar measure in Massachusetts.
In the gravitational pull of President Clinton's crushing 33-percent victory over Bob Dole in Massachusetts, Kerry beat Weld by 191,508 votes, or 7.5 percent of the 2.55 million cast At his victory party on election night, Kerry proclaimed, "We made this a race about health care for poor children, and when we finish, the Kerry-Kennedy health care bill for children will provide all children in America with health care!" But with the election over, it was Kennedy who did the heavy lifting on the child insurance bill: finding a Republican cosponsor in Utah Senator Orrin Hatch; raising money to run ads to battle the tobacco lobby; and going to war with Republican Senate leaders and the Clinton White House, when necessary, to win passage of a $24 billion health care program for uninsured children.
"Mostly Kerry is more interested in the titles of his bills than the actual guts of the legislation," says Weld's campaign spokesman, Rob Gray, now a GOP consultant. "He worked on bills that sounded good in press releases and gave him good media, and then moved on to the next thing."
Notice the tactics employed by Kerry against Weld are very similar to what he is doing now. He is following the same playbook. Look for Kerry to assemble more veterans to try to bail him out this time. However, his military record has never underwent this kind of scrutiny before.
"Hillary maybe running after all cauz I think Kerry might be toast!!!!!"
French Toast, that is!!
D
There's a whiff of desperation in the air at DU and the DNC.
(Buyer's remorse is such a bummer.)
Lots of families in rural Viet Nam use a water buffalo to plow their rice paddy. Kill the buffalo, the family becomes a band of starving refugees. And I'm not sure, but I think Kerry mentioned that exact aspect in his Senate testimony, claiming that some troops had killed buffalo just to screw these innocent civilian families over.
Other times it's because the book's a dud, the material is easily refuted and the publisher wants to prevent early exposure.
I certainly hope you're right. I don't see this author getting invitations for Good Morning America or This Week with Stephie Stephanopoulos, though. And I predict exactly zero mentions in the main news sources for so many, the Jay Leno and Jon Stewart monologues. Unfortunately, I think the fact that this is an election year does make it more newsworthy and therefore more imperative to spike it. I hope I'm wrong.
Gotta have a lieberal Judge in your pocket first... ;)
A blast! LOL!
That's not particularly accurate. Kerry had been accused of committing an atrocity during the incident that resulted in his Silver Star. Zumwalt and several Swift vets, including his former commander Elliott, came forward to state that these charges were not true, which is a far cry from "singing his praises."
I agree: Kerry has always relied on the core of leftist veterans who have supported him since his VVAW days when he gets in trouble. They help him wave the flag, contemptuously dismiss anybody who wasn't in Vietnam, and play the war hero card.
That isn't going to work as well this time...
Joe Conason will be the lead hit man on this project and they'll try to peel off John McCain:
"The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago."
Kerry destroyed himself last week.
I am telling you all now that Kerry will withdraw his name within 30 days of the election.
Hillary Clinton will step into the void.
And isn't it correct that since it's in the 30 day window a lot of poltical ads will not be able to name Clinton by name.
This is difficult to predict. If the Kerry camp views the book as effective, widely discussed, and damaging to Kery then they may decide they are forced to argue directly with the Swift Boat Vets and try to refute their charges. But if they view the book as a minor annoyance, they'll probably just ignore it as you suggest. So let's all buy the book and boost the sales numbers! Well I'm going to buy it anyway. It will be real interesting to see how big of a stir this book causes and how much Kerry wants to mix it up with the Swift Boat Vets. If he tries to argue directly with them, I predict he will run into a buzzsaw and get himself in deeper trouble. But I really don't know how this will turn out. I'm hoping for a big media controversy.
IT- can you explain where they got this silly idea?
I'm afraid that's not very realistic, because in a group of 200 people someone is going to have some connection to the Republican party. It's more important that the book is factually accurate and that all the people in the group actually served at the same time as Kerry and know something about him. The last thing I read was that O'Neill's group was working to verify that all the men had served in the Navy in the same time and place as Kerry.
I plan on buying several copies. Early Christmas gifts.
"Probably an M79. Rounds are HE (High Explosive) for use in relatively open terrain and fleshette rounds (like a big shotgun) for use in jungle."
It's spelled Fletchette. Not that I've ever fired one.
Thank you for your service!
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