:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 9.04.2004 ::

:: Enough GOP crap ::

Kerry Hits Back
The stung Democratic candidate goes on the offensive
From Sunday Herald online UK
Neil Mackay in New York

THE Republicans call him Lurch – a cruel jibe about the size of his lantern jaw. John Kerry’s nickname, comparing him to the Frankenstein monster butler in the 1960s TV show The Addams Family, was pretty apt last week as the Massachusetts senator and Democratic Party nominee for the presidency took punch after punch right on the tip of his famous chin from Dubya and the rest of the Republicans.

He’s weak, they said, and he’s wobbly – he shamed his military buddies by speaking out against the Vietnam war. He won’t fund the troops. He’s the kind of guy, the convention heard, who’d arm the troops with “spitballs” not guns.

But Kerry is showing he doesn’t have a glass jaw. He has come out fighting. His famous New England diplomacy kept his wrath in check for the four days of the Republican convention, even though his reputation was being whacked around harder than a baseball at Yankee Stadium. But as soon as the ribbons and balloons fell to earth inside Madison Square Garden Kerry – a many times decorated navy veteran – returned fire in an election campaign which promises to be the ugliest and most personal in US electoral history.

Vice-President Dick Cheney launched one of the most scathing character assassination bids during the convention, but Kerry wasn’t having it. “The Vice- President even called me unfit for office,” Kerry said. “I’ll leave it up to the voters whether or not five deferments [from military service] makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of combat duty.”

When Kerry was getting shot at up the Mekong Delta, Cheney dodged the draft. Sick and tired of the humiliating barrage of political flak that he’s come under in recent days, Kerry went on to call Bush and Cheney “unfit for duty”.

They had misled America into the war in Iraq, he said. Kerry also blasted Bush’s administration for letting 45 million Americans go without health care, allowing the Saudi royal family to control the nation’s energy and handing out “billions of government contracts to Halliburton” – Cheney’s former oil firm.

“They can’t talk about their record because it’s a record of failure. If you believe America needs to move in a new direction, join with us,” he said.

Will his fight back work? The latest opinion polls give Bush an 11% lead. That could be down to a post-convention bounce – the party rally was, after all, brutally slick and showed a mastery of spin which may have wooed floating voters. The poll showed that Bush was scoring best on the issues he’s made the heart of his campaign – strong leadership and fighting the war on terror.

ALSO from the Herald

"We don’t want our loved ones who died in 9/11 used as an excuse to start war"

posted by me

:: 8:11:00 PM [+] ::
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