Rush is having fun.
RUSH: The thing that is starting to effervesce out there is the swift boat thing. Now, I told you on Friday -- I might have even mentioned this on Thursday, the days run together -- but I mentioned to you that I had spoken to a mainstream elite journalist who told me that within the community of mainstream elite journalists in the partisan media that there was some concern over the way the Kerry camp was dealing with John O'Neill's group, the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.
And this Cambodia thing had 'em you know swimming up the river trying to figure out where the mouth was, and they were confused and they were thinking maybe there's a story here. Their natural inclination is, "Kerry is telling the truth; he served honorably. These guys are just spoiled brats, these swift boat vets funded by Republicans. They naturally lie because they're associated with Republicans," blah, blah, blah. Then the Kerry camp starts botching all these answers. And you know what the latest is on Cambodia? Kerry was there on four secret missions now. I kid you not. That's the latest, four secret missions from January through March. It's just all over the place.
And so the Sunday shows this week, there was quite a bit of discussion over is the campaign in trouble on this? Is there something there? And I'll tell you what it is. I'll tell you the thing that's got the people on the left who are bothered by this bothered. What it is, is this: This is a moment, a defining moment, in Kerry's life, one that he said is "seared," seared, seared in him. And now he has had to go to his biographer Doug Brinkley to revise the historical record. That's being done in the New Yorker.
"I'm sorry, it wasn't Christmas '68 that I was in Cambodia, and in fact, I wasn't really there. I was near. I only said I was near. I wasn't actually there. It was January, not December." Now they're trying to figure it out. It couldn't have been the Khmer Rouge that fired on him because they weren't on the battlefield till '72.
But, see, this what you would call a life moment. This is what Kerry called it in that '86 speech of his. He portrays this as a turning point in his life, when he realized his government was lying about him and to him and he vowed it wasn't going to happen again in Nicaragua. That was the whole point of his 1986 floor speech. But this defining moment, this turning point in his life the moment, when all the lights went on and he saw the truth and was finally revealed to him now he has 14 different versions. And people are saying how can the turning point in one's life have 14 different versions? How can something seared in a person you know, only be flash fried, you know, and then taken off to cool? There's some concern here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
It is Kerry's historian Doug Brinkley who says that Kerry was in Cambodia four times. Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February of '69 in clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and CIA guys, four secret missions.
How come we've never heard about this before? "They were secret, Rush, that's why, but now the word's out."
RUSH: Here's the script for the MoveOn.org ad. Byron York has this posted at National Review Online. The new MoveOn.org ad, "MoveOn.org Versus the Swift Vets," opens on the young George Bush in a National Guard uniform. An announcer says, "George Bush used his father to get into the National Guard (sic)," and they cut to Bush's National Guard medical form being stamped with "Failure to Appear." The announcer says, "When the chips were down, he went missing." They next cut to a shot of a television showing the swift boat spot, then words appear across the screen that say "False Advertising." Then the announcer says, "Now, George Bush is allowing false advertising that attacks John Kerry." Then they cut to footage of a young John Kerry in Vietnam. The announcer says, "A man who asked to go to Vietnam, and who served with dignity and heroism."
They cut to a half-screen picture of John McCain. His words appear on screen next to his picture, the announcer says, "Here's what a true Republican war hero has to say about the anti-Kerry ad," and they quote McCain saying, "I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn this ad." Then they cut to Bush and they are closed-captioning disclaimer copy, quote, "George Bush take that ad off the air. MoveOn PAC is responsible for the content of this ad." They also mention that Bush is "allowing" this ad. There's two things about this that just jump off the page. Bush is allowing nothing and Bush can't stop the ad. Bush can have no coordination with the 527 that's running this ad, just as ostensibly Kerry -- ostensibly -- could have no coordination with MoveOn.org. You know, MoveOn.org could run all the ads they want but the new campaign finance laws say that they can't be (coordinated with Kerry).
The way to look at all this is all the 527 PACs, they just placed the parties used to give unlimited donations to the parties called soft money and the parties would use them as they saw fit, and McCain-Feingold said, "That's dirty. That's too much money in politics. That's too partisan. It's too negative. We can't do that." So they wanted to limit the soft money, so they left a loophole for the creation of 527s that's not going to the party is now going to these, you know, 527 groups. But the stipulation in the loophole is, there cannot be any coordination. Bush can't tell these people to stop running the swiftvet ad any more than Kerry can tell the 527 people of MoveOn.org to stop running theirs. He can't "disavow it." He can't do anything about it; can't say a word about it, otherwise he's violating the law. They know this. It's in their ad copy, but they're just trying to give it impression that Bush is actually behind the ad which isn't the case, but I still note that in this ad they do not attempt to refute any of the charges made by the swift vets.
All they're saying is that, "This was dishonorable because McCain says it's dishonorable and Bush ought to pull this ad. This is horrible," in the middle of regurgitating for, what? the fifth time, this notion that Bush was AWOL from the National Guard. They had nothing new. They can't refute, apparently, what the swiftvets are saying. They try to do it with pictures and an impression, but they don't do it with facts and that's what has everybody here so upset about within the Kerry campaign over what appears to be an unraveling. And it really does, to a lot of people. This Cambodia thing and some other things about the campaign, some people think that it's unraveling and not going anywhere. By the way, there are some people on the Bush side that think that campaign is not going any great shakes either. However, Karen Hughes is back. She has just joined the Bush campaign and I think that we'll see some positive up-ticks from that. She's just that good. |
