Cheney Says Kerry Doesn't Understand West
NewsMax Wires
Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004
LAS VEGAS -- Vice President Dick Cheney portrayed Democrat John Kerry as a flip-flopper from the Northeast who doesn't understand the needs of the West. "It's not only wildfires that shift with the wind," Cheney told supporters Friday.
"As westerners, the president and I understand the challenges that you face here in Nevada, especially when it comes to protecting residents from wildfire," Cheney said during his first post-convention campaign swing.
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But Cheney said Kerry has a different view. "He says he's in touch with the West," the Republican said with a smile before delivering the punch line. "He must mean western Massachusetts." The president's home is Texas. Cheney is from Wyoming.
A day after the Republican convention in New York, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, headed West to Oregon, won by Al Gore in 2000, and Nevada, which Bush captured four years ago.
Focusing on a divisive issue in Nevada, Cheney defended Bush's support of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and accused the president's Democratic opponents of changing their minds on the issue. "That's their right. It's also their habit," Cheney said to cheers.
Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear dump site after winning the presidency, even though many scientific studies remained unfinished. Kerry has voted for some measures that included provisions allowing nuclear dumps there. But every time he has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca, Kerry has voted against it.
Environmental Efforts
In both states, Cheney emphasized Bush's environmental efforts, telling supporters that Bush helped enact "a good bipartisan law that is keeping forests healthier and communities safer."
Cheney then said Kerry didn't support the Healthy Forests Restoration Act when it was up for a vote. "Senator Kerry even said that thinning underbrush to prevent wildfires was the equivalent of taking a chain saw to the public forest," the vice president said.
Neither Kerry nor running mate John Edwards were present for the vote. Bush signed the measure into law in December.
Now, when Kerry campaigns in the West, Cheney said, the Democrat "turns his position around" and says he likes "a lot of the parts of the law."
"That makes one thing clear," Cheney said. "It's not only wildfires that shift with the wind."
The Kerry campaign accused the Bush administration of failing to fully fund the law.
"They left firefighters out to dry this summer," said Laura Capps, a Kerry-Edwards spokeswoman. She said the Democrats worked with governors of Western states to put together a forest-management plan that emphasized protecting communities.
Critics say Bush's forest law favors the timber industry, leaving old-growth trees and remote, roadless areas of forests at risk of logging, in the name of clearing brush to prevent wildfires.
At his two events Friday, Cheney ignored Kerry's criticism of the vice president and the president as avoiding service in Vietnam and being "unfit to lead the nation."
Responding to the comment, Anne Womack, Cheney's spokeswoman, said: "The Republicans just came out of a really exciting positive convention in which President Bush laid out an aggressive agenda for next four years. Senator Kerry's only response is to lash out and make personal attacks about the past. We think this election is about the future."
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