"Kerry Questioned on Draft Comment"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLXXXIX

From, of all places, The Boston Globe, Oct. 16 (brackets in original).

Campaigning in crucial battleground states, John F. Kerry yesterday [Oct. 15] sought to keep voters focused on the lackluster economy, while aides were busy explaining his assertion that President Bush may revive the draft if reelected and defending the senator's comment on gays in the last presidential debate.

Kerry caught even some of his advisers off guard late Thursday night by questioning Bush's word that he would maintain an ''all-volunteer army" in a meeting with the Des Moines Register's editorial board, arguing that Bush will soon run short of US forces to patrol Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

''With George Bush, the plan for Iraq is more of the same and the great potential of the draft," Kerry said to the Iowa journalists, who are preparing to make their coveted presidential endorsement next Sunday. ''Because if we go it alone, I don't know how you do it with the current overextension" of the military.

After a week of concerted focus on his domestic goals, the Democratic camp found itself grappling with the fallout from remarks by a nominee who does not hew to the campaign script as closely as the incumbent does.

Hours after the Register reported the remark in yesterday's paper, Bush repeated his commitment to an all-volunteer military during a rally in Cedar Rapids yesterday. His advisers amped up the response, accusing Kerry of ''fear-mongering" to win votes — an accusation Kerry regularly hurls at Bush over the war on terrorism.

Michael McCurry, a senior adviser to Kerry, found himself trying to tamp down the original comment, saying the Democrats had no evidence — nor did Kerry mean to imply — that Bush had a ''secret plan" for a draft.

''We're not putting this issue in play — he was just pressed pretty hard about what his positions were on Iraq," McCurry said in an interview. Earlier, aboard Kerry's campaign plane, McCurry insisted that Kerry was not guilty of the scare tactics that he ascribes to Bush: ''If you go and talk to any college kid on any campus, or report out what people are nervous about, you run into this — I mean, we get this all the time."

The White House yesterday also conveyed Bush's opinion about Kerry's reference at the debate to Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, in response to a question about whether homosexuality was a choice. ''I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as," Kerry said Wednesday night — a remark that was denounced the next day by the Cheneys and criticized as gratuitous by some gay-rights groups.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday the president ''does not think it was appropriate" for Kerry to cite Mary Cheney as he did. As for whether Kerry should apologize, McClellan said it is ''something for Senator Kerry to decide."

While the Kerry campaign shrugged off McClellan's comments, the Democratic presidential nominee told CNN yesterday that the comment ''was meant as a very constructive comment, in a positive way."

Asked to elaborate, Kerry said: ''It's respectful of who she is. And they've embraced her and they love her. And I think — I have great respect for them for that. And it seems to me that that's the point I was making."

Bush, meanwhile, left Oregon yesterday morning for the Cedar Rapids rally, where he found a greater outpouring of enthusiasm than people. The crowd at the US Cellular Center barely filled one-third of the arena; hundreds of seats sat empty, even though the campaign closed a portion of the arena to the public.

The Bush partisans cheered wildly, even when the president heralded the unemployment rate in Iowa — despite the fact that it rose to 4.5 percent from 4.4 percent in the summer months. The president dwelled at length on domestic issues, hammering Kerry as a ''liberal" who has voted to raise taxes in the Senate, while also defending his own remarks during the last debate about education, which came in response to a discussion about jobs.

''Our final debate, when I talked about the vital link between education and jobs, the senator didn't seem to get it. He said I switched away from jobs and said I started talking about education," Bush said. ''No; good jobs start with good education."

Kerry set out on a half-day bus ride from Milwaukee to Appleton, armed with a new critique of the ballooning budget deficit lightened somewhat with quips.

''There's only one way that we can hold this president accountable for the fact that he said the budget deficit was going to be short term and small," Kerry said — ''make sure his presidency is short term."

He also tried to trip up Bush for expressing pride in the economy, in spite of hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and the rising deficit, and described the loss of pride and hope of some financially struggling families.

''If this [economy] is what he's proud of, I would hate to see what he's ashamed of," Kerry said to cheers. ''Let's be clear: An economy like this doesn't just happen by itself."

Driving north along Lake Michigan, Kerry stopped to kick and head a ball with young soccer players as well as two members of the US Olympic women's team, Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach, who endorsed him. He also attended a bratwurst fry in Sheboygan, where people in the crowd shouted to correct his pronunciation of the regional favorite — before heading to a rally in Appleton.

Al Gore won Iowa and Wisconsin by less than a quarter of a percentage point in 2000, and polls suggest that both states are now evenly split. An American Research Group poll of Iowa, taken from Oct. 10 to 12, gave Bush and Kerry each 47 percent, with 2 percent for third-party candidate Ralph Nader, who is on the ballot there. In Wisconsin, the most recent statewide poll gave Kerry a slight advantage in the state, 47 to 43 percent over Bush, with 2 percent again for Nader. That poll, taken by Market Shares Corp. for the Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV, was conducted Oct. 8 to 11, before the third debate.

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''If you go and talk to any college kid on any campus, or report out what people are nervous about, you run into this — I mean, we get this all the time." How about that, boys & girls? The Democrats spread lies about the Republicans, thus generating concern — if not outright fear — among a target audience, and then use that fear to justify continuing to spread their lies.

Sheer demagoguery.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 10/18/04 07:41:03 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.