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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (483380)	10/29/2003 3:37:50 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Much of Kerry's problem is superficial. He's as stiff as a GI Joe. He's infatuated with the 1960s. He keeps talking about "our generation" to an electorate that is no longer of his generation. He speaks the language of the Kennedys, which now sounds flowery and phony. He adorns his prose with words like "lavish" and "astonishing." He calls the audience "my fellow Americans." He tells them he's "honored to join you in this endeavor." For the thousandth time, he begins a sentence with the pointless preface, "And I say to you today …" At another point, he proclaims, "Let me put it plainly: If Americans aren't working, America's not working." This is what audiences always have to wade through to get at whatever it is Kerry is trying to say: Nuggets of nothing, wrapped in pretentious rhetoric, compounded by the pretense of plain speaking. slate.msn.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (483380)	10/29/2003 3:38:28 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769667

Zell Miller Endorses Bush The Democratic senator from Georgia comes out swinging for the president. by Fred Barnes 10/29/2003 3:25:00 PM Fred Barnes, executive editor weeklystandard.com SENATOR ZELL MILLER OF GEORGIA, the nation's most prominent conservative Democrat, said today he will endorse President Bush for re-election in 2004 and campaign for him if Bush wishes him to. Miller said Bush is "the right man at the right time" to govern the country. The next five years "will determine the kind of world my children and grandchildren will live in," Miller said in an interview. And he wouldn't "trust" any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates with governing during "that crucial period," he said. "This Democrat will vote for President Bush in 2004." Miller, who is retiring from the Senate next year, has often expressed his admiration for Bush. He was a co-sponsor of the president's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. The two got to know each other in the 1990s when both were governors. The senator's endorsement is important for several reasons. With Miller on board, Bush will have a head start on forming a Democrats for Bush group in 2004. Such a group would woo crossover votes from conservative or otherwise disgruntled Democrats next year. In 2000, an effort by the Bush campaign to form a Democrats for Bush organization fizzled. Since he came to the Senate in 2000, Miller has become increasingly critical of Senate Democrats and the national Democratic party. He recently published a new book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," in which he criticizes the party for being too liberal, too elitist, and subservient to liberal interest groups. In the book, Miller singles out Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean, whom he knew as governor of Vermont, for being shallow. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

To: American Spirit who wrote (483380)	10/29/2003 3:40:32 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Tricky John Kerry Robert Novak September 4, 2003 WASHINGTON -- One reason why Sen. John Kerry has precipitously toppled from being putative Democratic nominee for president to a potential also-ran was demonstrated at the conclusion of his grueling interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. It had nothing to do with Iraq or taxation but everything to do with the senator's credibility and likeability. Moderator Tim Russert ended the hour-long program with the last blast from his massive research. Kerry was quoted by Vogue magazine last March as talking about George W. Bush's "lack of knowledge," and adding this: "He was two years behind me at Yale, and I knew him, and he's still the same guy." Implicitly, Kerry was saying the president was the same empty-headed, hard-drinking playboy he was in college. But when Russert twice asked Kerry just what he meant, he shrugged off these questions ("I believe that President Bush is a very likable fellow."). The conclusion widely drawn from that exchange is that Kerry never knew Bush at Yale and that he simply fibbed to Vogue's interviewer in trying to denigrate the president. In fact, there is an eyewitness: George W. Bush. He tells aides he certainly did not know John Kerry at Yale. Kerry, the Vietnam War hero-turned-protester who out-debated front-running Republican William Weld in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race, looks like a trickster running for president. On Tuesday, Kerry was tricky again. "Re-launching" his candidacy by announcing it at Patriot's Point, S.C., he declared: "I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations." Kerry's vote, which seemed politically prudent at the time, was to authorize -- not to threaten -- force in Iraq. Meeting privately Tuesday on another matter, a group of Democratic political operatives agreed that Kerry blew it that morning when interviewed by Katie Couric on NBC's "Today" program. Only a few months ago, Kerry was the presidential choice of establishment Democrats. He led the party's other eight candidates in the polls, and seemed the strongest challenger against President Bush. All this was predicated on getting his primary election season off to a winning start with being the sure primary winner in his neighboring state of New Hampshire Jan. 27. Kerry spent just short of $6 million on his virtually uncontested (without a Republican opponent) 2002 Massachusetts re-election campaign in order to bombard southern New Hampshire through the Boston media market. A month after the Massachusetts election, a New Hampshire poll showed Kerry with 40 percent and Howard Dean with 9 percent. Kerry has eight regional offices in the state and paid 38 visits there over two and one-half years. That explains the shock inside the Kerry camp when the Zogby Poll showed a 21-point lead by Dean on Aug. 27. While Kerry has certainly not abandoned New Hampshire, his campaign team has hastened to construct a backup position in South Carolina. However, Kerry's opponents privately deride the switch of his Tuesday announcement from Boston to South Carolina, which holds its primary one week after New Hampshire. The Zogby Poll in July gave Kerry 5 percent in South Carolina for fifth place. He had not been in that state for three months prior to his Tuesday announcement. The announcement from the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown generated chuckles among the Democratic lobbyists who met Tuesday. These savvy Democrats used the words "arrogant" and "attitude" in describing what they felt what was wrong with their former front-runner. That may stem from Kerry's failure to come to grips with his ambivalence on the Iraq war. On "Meet the Press," Russert played a tape of Kerry addressing the Senate last Oct. 9 with a hard-line speech declaring Iraq "is capable of quickly producing weaponizing" of biological weapons that could be delivered against "the United States itself." "That is exactly the point I'm making," Kerry replied to Russert. "We were given this information by our intelligence community." But as a senator, Kerry had access to the National Intelligence Estimate that was skeptical of Iraqi capability. Being tricky may no longer be as effective politically as it once was. townhall.com