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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Dogs of War

I suggested last week that the Republicans might “let slip the dogs of war” a bit earlier and more emphatically than they did in 2000. Boy, was that ever an understatement.
On an evening supposedly devoted to defending the administration’s economic record, the two big prime-time speakers, Zell Miller and Dick Cheney, unloaded a truckload of bile against John Kerry’s national security record. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so many slurs, misleading inferences, and bold-face lies in the course of an hour of rhetoric. Miller didn’t bother to even mention the economy or any other domestic issue. Cheney barely did, and even then just trotted out the usual BC04 talking points with a notable lack of enthusiasm. This night was about destroying John Kerry, period.
Yesterday I wondered how Miller would explain his support for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. He didn’t even deign to mention, much less defend his strange transformation. But perhaps his own flip-flop led him to ignore that prong of the GOP attack on Kerry, and instead devote his entire speech to the argument that the Democratic candidate hates the military, hates his country, and would turn over the world to the French, if not to al Qaeda itself.
The Bushies supposedly thought Zell would help them win over swing voters. I have a hard time believing anybody was won over by this glowering rant. Not since Pat Buchanan’s famous “culture war” speech in 1992 has a major speaker at a national political convention spoken so hatefully, at such length, about the opposition. At the dark heart of the speech was the same old tired litany of lies and mischaracterizations about Kerry’s Senate votes on military spending and weapons systems that BC04 has been retailing for many months.
While Zell was too hot, Cheney was too cold, sounding more like a Haliburton exec speaking at a retirement dinner than a Vice President of the United States defending his administration’s record. Even his best attack lines, like the “John Kerry sees two Americas….America sees two John Kerrys” bit, were delivered with a tone of condescending sarcasm rather than conviction.
Unlike Miller, Cheney alternatively pursued both prongs of the attack on Kerry’s national security credentials: he’s a flip-flopper who always takes the wrong position. At some point, BC04 will have to make up its mind which one of these slurs it chooses to emphasize, and stick with it for a while. But clearly, this is a convention whose managers are not overly worried about logic. Inspired by the Swift Boat Veterans ads which they believe have turned the election completely around, the Bushies have gone negative with a real vengeance.

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