The <font color=blue>'positive'<font color=black> candidate: a timeline
The Chronicle Online
September 06, 2004
by Nathan Carleton
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John Kerry loves to accuse his opponents of below-the-belt personal attacks. He has discussed a <font color=blue>“Republican attack squad,”<font color=black> responded to supposed attacks on his <font color=blue>“patriotism,”<font color=black> and charged, with very little evidence, that the White House is illegally coordinating 527-advertisements against him. Last week, Kerry described the Republican convention as <font color=blue>“almost nothing but anger and insults.”<font color=black>
The next time Kerry calls a heated analysis of his voting record a smear campaign, remember what he and his high-level supporters have been doing the last year and a half:
4/2/03: Kerry calls for a <font color=blue>“regime change in the United States.”<font color=black>
6/20/03: John Edwards says: <font color=blue>“We have to show this president as the absolute phony that he is.”<font color=black>
9/4/03: Kerry says it <font color=blue>“would be wonderful to have a President of the United States who could find the rest of the countries in this hemisphere.”<font color=black>
9/9/03: Kerry says President George W. Bush <font color=blue>“behaves like Jefferson Davis on the Confederate flag.”<font color=black>
9/18/03: Ted Kennedy says the Iraq War <font color=blue>“was made up in Texas” for political gain.<font color=black>
12/1/03: Howard Dean discusses the <font color=blue>“interesting theory”<font color=black> that President Bush was warned about 9/11.
12/2/03: Kerry uses the f-word to attack the President’s Iraq policy.
2/1/04: DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe says the President was <font color=blue>“AWOL”<font color=black> from the National Guard.
2/8/04: Former Vice President Al Gore screams that President Bush <font color=blue>“Betrayed this country!”<font color=black>
3/10/04: Kerry calls Republicans <font color=blue>“crooked”<font color=black> and <font color=blue>“lying.”<font color=black>
3/17/04: Kerry accuses President Bush of placing a <font color=blue>“target”<font color=black> on the backs of U.S. troops.
4/26/04: Kerry attacks President Bush’s National Guard service three times in one interview, saying the President <font color=blue>“can’t even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard”; “can’t even show or prove that he showed up for duty in the National Guard”; and “has yet to explain to America whether or not, and tell the truth, about whether he showed up for duty.”<font color=black>
4/28/04: On floor of the U.S. Senate, Frank Lautenberg displays a cartoon chicken and calls the President and Vice President <font color=blue>“chickenhawks” who were “AWOL”<font color=black> during Vietnam.
5/7/04: Teresa Heinz Kerry calls the Vice President <font color=blue>“unpatriotic.”<font color=black>
5/19/04: Nancy Pelosi calls the President <font color=blue>“an incompetent leader” with “no judgment” who “has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops.”<font color=black>
5/23/04: Senator Tim Johnson compares the Republican party to <font color=blue>“the Taliban.”<font color=black>
5/26/04: Gore calls the military’s prison system <font color=blue>“Bush’s gulag.”<font color=black>
5/31/04: On Memorial Day, Kerry says President Bush <font color=blue>“didn’t learn the lessons”<font color=black> of Vietnam and is putting soldiers <font color=blue>“at greater risk.”<font color=black>
6/28/04: Introducing Kerry, Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley says the Bush administration worries him more than al Qaeda does.
7/8/04: Kerry calls a group of celebrities the <font color=blue>“heart and soul”<font color=black> of America after they call President Bush a <font color=blue>“cheap thug who sacrifices our young”<font color=black> and his Presidency <font color=blue>“a self serving-regime of deceit, hypocrisy and belligerence.”<font color=black>
7/9/04: Kerry-Edwards Florida Chairman Rep. Kendrick Meek says Jeb Bush <font color=blue>“was like bin Laden after the 2000 election.”<font color=black>
7/15/04: Kerry criticizes President Bush for not speaking to the NAACP despite the group’s leaders comparing the President to a Nazi, a confederate, a Taliban member and a Jim Crow segregationist.
7/25/04: Teresa Heinz Kerry says <font color=blue>“we have basically given scholarships to potential terrorists to become terrorists.”<font color=black>
7/27/04: Ted Kennedy calls Republicans <font color=blue>“false patriots.”<font color=black>
8/2/04: Kerry calls a group of President Bush’s supporters <font color=blue>“goons”<font color=black> and Teresa Heinz Kerry says they <font color=blue>“want four more years of hell.”<font color=black>
8/16/04: Quoted in Newsweek, Kerry National Security adviser Rand Beers says the President underfunds homeland security because the most targeted areas are in Democratic states.
8/16/04: Senator Tom Harkin calls Vice President Cheney a <font color=blue>“coward.”<font color=black>
9/2/04: Kerry responds to the Vice President’s convention speech by saying he served two tours of duty in Vietnam while the Vice President obtained deferments.
Now: Kerry and his advisors have reportedly decided that
he can only catch up in the polls if he stops playing nice
and goes negative.
It’s hard to see what more that would entail.
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Nathan Carleton is a Trinity senior.
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