Frank Luntz: Why Bush won (excellent read)

So how does a president with a national job approval rating below 50 percent, an economy that lost more than a million jobs over his four years in office, a war that has cost more than a thousand American lives and counting, and a national mood that is downright sour still secure more than enough votes to win re-election?

The components of the Bush victory and Kerry defeat all boil down to a single candidate attribute that the president had in abundance but was AWOL from the Kerry campaign: "says what he means and means what he says." In every state and national survey we conducted in 2004, no desired presidential attribute ever scored higher, and nowhere was Mr. Bush stronger and Mr. Kerry weaker. In every focus group I moderated, voters would plead for candidates who spoke from the heart and not from some speechwriter's notes.

And nowhere does the image of straight talk matter more than on national security. John Kerry had had two full years to articulate a concise position on Iraq and a clear alternative strategy that offered a successful and more immediate resolution to the war. He couldn't do it.

Even during the three presidential debates, the senator gave answers that left uncommitted voters in my focus groups both confused and mystified. His critique of the current administration's failures clearly did political damage, but the electorate could not define exactly what he would do differently. What Mr. Kerry did not realize was that referencing "a plan" roughly two dozen times over 90 minutes is different than actually having one.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, but that doesn't mean Rove did a good job. At this point it's quibbling, but a lot of charges went unanswered in the earlier part of the year that allowed Kerry to continue to gain too much ground and made this closer than it needed to be into the fall and the first debate was not good.
This may apply more to Republicans on the Hill that to Karl Rove, but I want to see us take the offensive more and fight back. We need somebody like Gingrich again.

Assuming we get some retiring justices, I wonder if the Senate should use the "nuclear" option and change the rules to a simple majority during any confirmation. I would try it the way it is now first and dare the D's to block.

I get confused. Are these the good guys or what? Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Post, Los Angeles Times.

They're all a bunch of chicken-shit bastards if you ask me. Perhaps I shouldn't concern myself with John Swinton's statement:

""There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

Dan Rather/Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw know it.

What can I say?

In 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway inserted the following statement in the Congressional Record:

"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.

These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found that it was only necessary to purchase control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of these papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers...

This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests being served." Feb 9, 1917, vol 54, pp.2947-48

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, but that doesn't mean Rove did a good job.

If the outcome doesn't prove the quality of the campaign, what will? I certainly hope Dubya will try to achieve solutions that a majority of Americans and some rats can support, before engaging in a divisive and self-destructive pissing match. The rats can still block and stall and they still have the MSM to shill for them. If they can get away with it...they will do it.

With a solid majority of 55 it will be much easier and less costly to pay off 5 DINOs to allow cloature in the Senate, than to give the rats cover to obstruct and pass nothing. Work smarter not harder.

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