Posted on 09/03/2004 10:48:47 AM PDT by Roscoe Karns
My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.
They are worried, having watched as another August smear campaign, full of lies and half-truths, takes its toll in the polls.
They are frustrated, mostly at the Kerry campaign, for naively believing that just because all the newspapers and news organizations that investigated the charges of the Swift Boat assassins found them to be full of lies and half-truths, they wouldn't take their toll. The word on the street is that Kerry himself was ready to fire back the day the story broke, but that his campaign, believing the charges would blow over if they ignored them, counseled restraint.
But most of all, activists Democrats are angry. As one who lived through an August like this, 16 years ago -- replete with rumors that were lies, which the Bush campaign claimed they had nothing to do with and later admitted they had planted -- I'm angry, too. I've been to this movie. I know how it works. Lies move numbers.
Remember the one about Dukakis suffering from depression after he lost the governorship? (Dukakis not crazy, more at 11.) We lost six points over that lie, planted by George W.'s close friend and colleague in the 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater. Or how about the one about Kitty Dukakis burning a flag at an antiwar demonstration, another out-and-out lie, which the Bush campaign denied having anything to do with, except that it turned out to have come from a United States senator via the Republican National Committee? Lee Atwater later apologized to me for that, too, on his deathbed. Did I mention that Lee's wife is connected to the woman running the Swift Boat campaign?
Never again, we said then.
Not again, Democrats are saying now.
What do you do, Democrats keep asking each other.
The answer is not pretty, but everyone knows what it is.
In 1988, in the days before the so-called independent groups, the candidate called the shots. To Michael Dukakis' credit, depending on how you look at it, he absolutely refused to get into the gutter, even to answer the charges. His theory, like that of some on the Kerry staff, was that answering such charges would only elevate them, give them more attention than they deserved. He thought the American people wanted to hear about issues, not watch a mud-wrestling match. In theory, he was right. In practice, the sad truth is that smears work -- that if you throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick.
You can't just answer the charges. You can't just say it ain't so.
You have to fight fire with fire, mud with mud, dirt with dirt.
The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Dukakis wasn't. I wasn't. I don't particularly like destroying people. I got into politics because of issues, not anger. But too much is at stake to play by Dukakis rules, and lose again.
That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.
I'm not promising pretty.
What will it be?
Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)
After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.
It has been said that in the worst of times, Kissinger gave orders to the military not to obey Nixon if he ordered a first strike. What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?
Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard. I'm sure there are some mothers out there who are still mourning their sons, and never made that connection. It wouldn't be so hard to find them.
Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. So far, all W. can do is come up with dental records to prove that he met his obligations. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.
Or could it be George Bush's Former Female Friends for Truth. A forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion. As Larry Flynt discovered, a million dollars loosens lips. Are there others to be loosened?
Are you shocked? Not fair? Who said anything about fair? Remember President Dukakis? He was very fair. Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That's why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently.
The arrogant little Republican boys who have been strutting around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November.
To find out more about Susan Estrich, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
So we have been told. But I don't believe it. 65-35, or 60-40 worst case. The DEMs obtain power through persistent subversion, lying and cheating. I sense that the "good guys" have been awakened.
Note to Susan:
Lee Atwater was smarter than you even with a brain tumor.
And I think you and your hateful Dem friends all have a tumor about 18 inches lower, in your chest cavities.
I'm so sick of this. The Rats' conducted their entire primary season as a Bush Bash Fest. All 9 candidates spent millions of dollars criticizing the President instead of each other. In February 2004 (long before swift boat vets came along) McCauliffe accused the President of going AWOL. As did Wesley Clark. Kerry himself called the Bush Administration “the most lying, corrupt group of guys” and he endorsed Whoopi Goldberg and John Mellencamp when they called the President a “cheap thug. Al Gore: He plaaaaaaaaaaaayed on our fears. John Dean accused the President of knowing about 9/11 before it happened. Hillary also said “he knew”. Ted Kennedy called the President a liar. Daschle: called him a miserable failure. Then we had the Bush bashing book collection followed by the movie. And let's not forgoet the filth in the streets of NYC holding up signs calling him names all week -- the losers who don't deserve the freedom of speech they enjoy thanks to our soldiers. This has been going on since the 2000 primary when they ran ads trying to tie him in the Jasper truck dragging.
Zell, did you have to be so tough on poor defenseless Kerry?
Susan in in total melt down. Poor baby.
DemocratDomesticTerrorists in training ...
Another one of Ailes great hires over at Fox.
Boy has Fox gone to pieces in the past couple of years.
Having the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis' presidential bid do political analysis has always struck me as rather funny. Approving of that tank ride with the oversized helmet must disqualify a person on some level... heh heh heh.
Susan, who really cares hun.
Let them bring it on. We've got all the guns.
Changing the subject, Carl Cameron was just commenting that hurricane Frances and now Clinton's surgery is getting in SKerry's limelight. LOL.
"If God is for you, who can be against you?"
Simple, undeniable truth: if you are going to attack a presidential candidate;s character, you have to do it before the first term in office. Everyone knows what Bush is like as a president, and that is what they will judge him on.
When her mouth is closed, the sound you hear is being generated by the wind whistling through her ears as it passes through the empty cavity between them.
Smart politicians understand aiki-do.
The aiki-do master uses the momentum of an opponent's attack against the aggressor. Bush understands that Kerry's attack is coming. He will turn Kerry's smears back on Kerry, putting the lie to the proposition that Kerry's campaign is high minded and fair. But further, he will round on Kerry by using his plate of issues back on the Democrat, while at the same time using aiki-do as a counterattack.
Kerry will attack with personal smears: we saw that last night during Kerry's "Howard Dean moment". Bush will maintain his focus on his agenda, bypassing Kerry's attack to take his case directly to the electorate.
Estrich has obviously been talking to Shrum and others in the enemy camp. She knows that Kerry's internals must be horrible to behold. And so, the Dems will try to go hugely negative to hold down Bush. It will work with the clueless, just like the DUI charge worked like a charm late in the 2000. However, the Bush people will be campaigning on issues that have resonance with the public at large.
Kerry's personal attack will be countered by a Bush assertion that negative attacks add nothing to the debate and do not help "working families". Again, the Democrats do themselves little credit in taking this line of attack, and there is no way Kerry could form a governing coalition based on such a campaign. However, I believe that the larger electorate will be turned off no end by yet another Democratic smear campaign.
The Swifties succeeded in large part because their charges had the ring of truth. The Democrats will fail because their charges will turn out to be lies, and, sidestep the need to address the great issues of the day.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
I keep expecting to see Estritch on some show screeching about poppies while she strokes her flying monkeys.
My word! What an ugly DemocRAT.
We saw her in a panel during the convention. My wife and I couldn't help but notice the crazed look on her face, the slow, gutteral speech when she answered a democrats call as to why was it their party's convention had all the hatred. She just answered - "I was there it wasn't us." and looked like she was going to explode.
Apparently she did.
The comment about how a $million$ can loosen lips is a candid admission about how the campaign gets all it "witnesses" for Kerry IMO. Soros has gone public saying he'd give up his entire fortune to get rid of Bush. That's 7,000+ millionare witnesses for Kerry.
Grazie nick. Work has taken the back seat this week to FReeping... need this election to be over!
Touche!
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