POLITICAL DIARY
August 20, 2004
James Taranto is on the road promoting his book, "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House," (the book is available at the OpinionJournal bookstore). Best of the Web Today returns Aug. 23. Today we are offering Political Diary, the editorial page's daily e-mail newsletter. Click here to subscribe to Political Dairy.
In today's Political Diary:
How Denny Sees the House Battle
Oklahoma Senate Race May Be Swinging to the GOP
Kerry/NYT Combo Aims a B-40 at the Swift Vets
My 527s Are Red Hot, Yours are Diddley Squat (Quote of the Day)
Texas Dems Sue for Child Support
Democratic Women Reveal Their Concerns
The Speaker's Lineup
Dennis Hastert is looking to his vote count for the next Congress, and he likes what he sees so far. In fact, even if President Bush were to lose the election, the House Speaker is optimistic Republicans can increase their majority. During a briefing with Journal editors earlier this month, he ran down his mental list of important races.
The GOP has six open seats to protect, and Mr. Hastert believes three of the incumbents are seriously at risk: Rick Renzi of Arizona, Max Burns of Georgia, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
On the other side of the equation, the GOP should pick up five to seven seats in Texas, and Mr. Hastert also sees 12 more seats of opportunity in other states. The former wrestling coach is particularly excited about several new minority players on his team: In Michigan's fifth district, which includes Michael Moore's home town of Flint, a black woman and former Detroit police officer, Myrah Kirkwood, is challenging mayor of Hempstead and head of the U.S. Council of Mayors, James Arthur Garner, is challenging Carolyn McCarthy, who has been coasting on the sympathy vote since her husband was killed in the Long Island Railroad shootings a decade back. And Goli Ameri, an Iranian-American businesswoman, is taking on David Wu in Oregon's first district.
--Hugo Restall
If Doc Coburn Wins by 4000, It's the Baby Vote
Democrats like their chances of picking up U.S. Senate seats in Colorado and Alaska, but they privately fear Oklahoma, where GOP Senator Don Nickles is retiring, may be slipping away from them.
A new poll by Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman and Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, shows former Republican Rep. Tom Coburn holding a 45% to 43% lead over Democrat Rep. Brad Carson. The GOP's latest poll, released last Wednesday, has Dr. Coburn, a physician who left Congress in 2000 to honor a personal term limit of six years he set for himself, with a 47% to 39% lead. The key to Mr. Coburn's strength is his ability to win rural Democratic votes in his old Congressional district. He is the only Republican to have ever represented the area.
Dr. Coburn has support from a remarkable 26% of Democrats in the GOP survey and has a larger lead among women than men -- unusual for a Republican. Observers say one explanation is Dr. Coburn has delivered over 4,000 babies during his career. TV ads by independent groups that touted his record of community service during the primary campaign provided him with a softer image than most Republicans get.
--John Fund
Swift Boat Vets, the Michael Moores of the Right?
The New York Times/Kerry Campaign opened its counterattack on the swift boat vets, with Kerry insisting that attacks on his Vietnam record were sponsored by a Bush "front group." Today's NYT front page fills in the details: The same Alexandria, Virginia political advertising firm did work for Mr. Bush in South Carolina in 2000 and sculpted the Mike Dukakis-in-a-tank ad for Mr. Bush's father in 1988. Also, two prominent financiers of the swift boat campaign, Harlan Crow and Bob Perry, have "connections" to Mr. Bush.
Get it? All of the above are part of a "web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove."
Of course, the firm Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm has a list of GOP clients as long as your arm, and any politically active Republican businessman in Texas would have "connections" with the state's leading Republican politician. But only a fool misses the fact there's another agenda at work here that goes beyond GOP interest in reelecting Mr. Bush. Even NYT puts its finger on one fundamental truth, namely that much of this arises from long-lived anger by many vets over Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities in the early 1970s.
Unfortunately the paper misses another important truth. Mr. Kerry has staked his presidential campaign disproportionately and absurdly on the four months he spent in Vietnam in 1969. Not even the Times' own reporters, let alone reporters from less partisan publications, can refer to the Kerry Campaign's endless repetition of "Vietnam" anymore without heavy irony. Doesn't this tell editors something?
Mr. Kerry's political strategy, frankly, impairs the respect owed Mr. Kerry as a vet. He has cynically milked Vietnam to carry him along in his political career for 30 years, and never more so than since he started running for president. If that's how he hopes to take the White House, it's rather weenie of him now to take exception just because Republicans are fighting back.
Yes, some of the attacks aimed at Mr. Kerry have clearly been flaky or scurrilous. But we still wouldn't advise Mr. Bush to denounce the Vietnam critics as long as Mr. Kerry insists on making Vietnam a central issue in this campaign -- even if it were possible (which it isn't) for Mr. Bush to speak precisely enough to distinguish legitimate questions about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam-related behavior from the sleazier stuff.
--Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Quote of the Day
"The dirty work thus far has been done much more to Kerry's benefit than to Bush's. Estimates from last month indicate that Democratic "leaning" 527s such as MoveOn, the Media Fund and America Coming Together had spent some $50 million on TV ads -- almost all of them attacking Bush. Much has been made by Kerry supporters of the 'positive' campaign the Democrat has run on the airwaves. But that's easy to do when you're getting support from other sources on the negative front" -- National Journal columnist Vaughn Ververs, on John Kerry's complaints about "dirty work" being done by the "527" ad group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Not Messing With Texas
As chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, trial lawyer Charles Soechting certainly knows how to make use of the aggressive tactics of the legal profession. He's been telling his trial lawyer buddies and other major donors that they should no longer send checks to the Democratic National Committee. The reason? He is disgusted that the national party is ignoring non-battleground states in the fall election.
"Is it a line in the sand between myself and the DNC? Yes, it is," he told the Houston Chronicle. He said the final straw came when the DNC offered the Texas party a paltry $5,000 if it would uproot its staff and send them to battleground states where the Kerry campaign thinks it has a chance of winning. Mr. Soechting complains that it's a bad idea to create a new division in politics between states that are hotly contested in national races and those that are treated like the proverbial Maytag repairman and ignored.
While Mr. Soechting is certainly engaged in political spin when he says he is "not willing to concede Texas is not winnable," he has a point about how long donors to major parties can be expected to send money to the national effort while seeing no tangible evidence of an active campaign in their own backyards.
--John Fund
Democratic Porno Spam
This week marked a first: A political e-mail with skin pictures. Upon opening the "Axis of Eve" e-mail, we were greeted with a photo that showed the torso of a young woman holding up her skirt to reveal red undies with the words "Weapons of Mass Seduction" across the front.
Sound good? Then any Republican perv planning to attend the New York convention won't want to miss the Sept. 1 "Mass Flash" planned by Axis of Eve. More than 100 women will add to the political discourse by simultaneously showing their underpants. Among the slogans to be revealed in the process "Give Bush the finger." NOW must be so proud.
Of course, one of the unhappiest episodes in recent political memory began when a young lady flashed her undergarment for a Democratic president. The Kerry's team might wonder, with friends like these, who needs a sex-scandal?
Organizers say there will be no nudity, but we bet Mr. Kerry still wishes these adoring strippers would save their enthusiasm for election day.
Meanwhile, across town, another protest to file under "Misguided Women for Kerry" was planned to begin yesterday. A women's peace group calling itself CodePink ultimately aim to place a "human billboard" across from Madison Square Garden. It will consist of women dressed as pink Statues of Liberty with slogans like "Dissent is Patriotic" and "Say No to War."
So far, CodePink's efforts have not unfolded with notable success. Colleen Galbraith, a CodePink protestor who was arrested while trying to hang a banner from a New York hotel this week when Mayor Bloomberg was speaking nearby, quipped afterward that there's apparently a little known clause in the First Amendment that stipulates that free speech may not take place on New York's West Side Highway. She further expressed her outrage in a press release: "I find it the height of hypocrisy that the Mayor is unveiling an NYC welcome mat to protestors, at the same moment the city is authorizing the arrest of four peaceful women trying to oppose New York's egregious censorship of free speech."
But CodePink has another way to sway hearts and minds. On August 29, outside Fox News Studios, they're planning a "shut-up-a-thon." |
