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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (76454)	5/28/2006 12:49:20 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

True, Kerry underestimated the effect, a crucial mistake, but smear campaigns put the targets in a no-win position unless the target can prove his opponent sanctioned the smears. Bush somehow as able to claim he wasn't responsible though clearly Rove ran everything. So what could Kerry have done that he didn't do? A few things maybe, but hard tio say if they would have done anything more than knock him off message. Kerry he did deny their claims and did send his Dog Hunter Crewmen and Max Cleland after them. The tragedy was that the rightwing media threw all ethics to the wind, deciding to get 100% behind the lies and push them as their main campaign issue. A totally phony issue but an issue nonetheless. Then the mainstream media either got suckered in or felt they had to cover the issue, and to be "fair" gave the smearvet liars equal time (millions in free exposure) to debate the charges. Bottomline, Rove's strategy is to smear all opponents, and n o lie is too ridiculous, especially war heros opponents who might make Bush look like a draft-dodging wimp, like McCain, Kerry and Murtha. Plus they smeared Cleland to help steal back the senate. And they would have smeared Wes Clark too. The liars themselves are most guilty, the GOP in general as well, but also guilty is the press for ever giving the liars any free air time, and any person out there who fell for that crap. But yes, it worked and made it difficult for Kerry to define himself the way he really is, flex his greatest strengths, without seeming to boast, and Kerry does not boast. He also doesn't get down in the mud with smear artists. He always leaves that up to surrogates. But in this case the smear artists had the entire power of the rightwing and GOP behind them, which made handling and disproving the lies next to impossible until it was too late. Once the election was over the smearvets stopped even pretending 90%v of the lies were true, but continued a few lies, like the Cambodia question. That's the only one they feel they might be able to "prove". However, Kerry's diary clearly shows he was on the Cambodian border on the date in question. So not a single one of the claims was true. Also atrocious was defending of the Vietnam War as if it was some noble struggle against tyranny. They were trying to call Kerry a traitor though clearly the real traitors were the ones who were pushing for that war (and this one now) to continue ad infinitum. And btw, almost all these smear nonsense was paid for by corporate funds. This was not a grassroots effort nor was it run by real vets. In fact noe a single person in the smearvets ever fought with Kerry and only 3-4 even ever met him in Vietnam.