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AUG 16 - 31, 2004 |
VOL. 2 ISSUE 16 |
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AUGUST 22, 2004 – Last week, when Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry lashed out against Moveon.org's ad, we had to wonder: was John becoming another Al Gore who, no matter how low or indecent the Bush/Limbaugh smear-and-lie tactics got, would never stand up to them - even worse, stop other people from standing up to them as well?
Was Kerry going to play the, "I'm taking the high road," game Gore did, promising not to attack and thinking that would be enough? It seemed crazy and a tactical mistake.
We at The Moderate Independent have said all along that the biggest issue this election - and in the country at the moment - is not Iraq nor the economy, but the right-wing blame-and-lie machine, made up of talk radio, FOX News, many newspapers, magazines, CNBC, MSNBC, and numerous scum groups such as "Swift Boat Imbeciles Against Truth and Decency."
It was bad enough that Kerry was not responding to the absurd attacks that have been going on via talk radio/FOX all year. It was even worse that he had been going on FOX News, doing interviews that give the station a seeming credibility.
But now John was taking on not the Bush/Limbaugh blame-and-lie machine, but a grassroots organization that was coming to his defense?
As it turns out, John was not following in the footsteps of a whole generation of Democratic wimps who had come before him. No, John was setting up an all-out frontal assault, the one that should have been waged years ago.
By coming out against Moveon.org's ad attacking President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, John was taking the truly moral stand against all smears and setting up his next maneuver. John wasn't taking the high road by being a passive punching bag, as Gore did. John was setting up the sort of assault that brought McCarthyism down, and getting set to display what we've been saying all along: that Kerry is not a whiny, wimpy-type Northeast liberal.
John is a tough-as-hell vet. And he is born of the Boston/New York Northeast mold, the street proud tough guy, not the Harvard type intellectual wuss.
We warned the Bush campaign way back in March in this article that Kerry would not let himself be bullied the way Gore did. We knew the Bush camp didn't get it, that Kerry was a different type of Northeasterner (as we explained more fully in this article.) It was clear that the Bushies were so used to getting away with bullying unchallenged, and had grown so overconfident in their big-mouthed amorality, that they were "set to dig their own grave."
And all along we said that all it would take to bring down the Bush/Limbaugh blame-and-lie machine was to take a stand against it, pull the covers, and shine the light on the AM radio/FOX News/Bush smear-and-lie cave they get away with hiding in. Last October we wrote in this article, commenting on how both Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage Weiner didn't last but a couple weeks on TV yet somehow live on and on 4 hours a day on AM:
Almost a year had gone by since we'd written that, and still nothing had been done. All day every day Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity and hundreds of others all over the nation all night and day spread the same hate and lies and smears, and it is what single-handedly has been responsible for gaining the Bush Republicans control of the entire federal Government.
But now, at last, John Kerry has led a Democratic charge - truly the first of this magnitude ever - to bring the Bush/Limbaugh smear-and-lie machine out of it's safe little cave where it had been huddling like a cowardly Osama. Like the question that brought the absurdly, brutally amoral Senator McCarthy and his McCarthyist reign to an end, Kerry has asked President Bush, "Have you no decency? Have you no basic sense of morals?"
Even better, he echoed what we said days ago, that this is not an election, it is a chump check. Like President Bush lying about the economy again and again, lying about Iraq again and again, John Kerry said to America, "The President unleashed lies and smears to degrade war hero John McCain, and you fell for it. You were dumb enough to let him do it again against Max Cleland. But now it is time for you to stop being chumps and realize that President Bush simply has no basic sense of morality and attacks all men who served their country in battle as unpatriotic, crazy and unfit to serve. It is time to see the game for what it is, the President for the scum he is, and war heroes as the heroes they are - and Bush the never-fought as the chicken hawk he is."
The Bush camp could not have walked more stupidly into this explosion.
Teresa Heinz-Kerry has made clear all along the reason she recently switched from being a lifelong Republican to a Democrat and truly urged her husband to run for office was the way Max Cleland was treated during the 2002 elections. Did Bush not get that that meant there was no way she nor anyone in the Kerry camp would let that same game be run on John? She and John were salivating at the opportunity to stuff that game right down Bush's throat, avenging their friend Cleland, and the idiot Bush has given them exactly that chance.
The Bush camp was so idiotized by the one-side controlled safety they are used to on talk radio and FOX News and from their vetted campaign rally audiences that they didn't stop to think that attacking John's war medals earned in battle might not be such a good idea for someone who never fought at all.
The Bushies are so psychotically out of touch, so lost in AM talk smeareo land, that they truly think they can simply tell obvious lies and hateful smears and that no one will ever be able to call them on it. They think, like on the Limbaugh or Hannity or O'Reilly show, that they can just hang up on the other side, turn down their mic volume, cut them off, never let the simple truth come out.
All along they were counting on John Kerry to be the sort of wussy little never-fight-back wimp they kept saying on AM he would be.
Not only have they found out they were dead wrong, but they set up a situation where John got to show himself to be truly tough, presidential, bold, and willing to take important stands fearlessly. Watching John stand up to this smear campaign against him, the nation is getting to see how John would deal with scum like Saddam and Osama.
He is not flip flopping around somewhere, overanalyzing, sitting by with cowardly inaction ala Carter or Gore. The Bushies gave him a chance to show how he would deal with a despot who is out to attack, and John has risen ferociously to the challenge. Every game Bush is trying to use in response - calling Kerry "wild-eyed" and and saying he is "losing his cool" - is only backfiring, as Kerry just ratchets up his assault and, with the truth on his side, sees person after person around the country rise to speak in his defense.
The Bushies expected they could continue their war on America's war heroes. They counted wrong.
America has begun to rise to this chump check. All it took was John stepping forward and saying, "Enough is enough. I'm not going to take this. Who is with me?"
And one by one, Americans are coming forward and saying, "My days of being a chump are over. I am with you John."
This episode is burying Bush, highlighting his lack of service, lack of basic decency, and his dishonest, vicious nature. We said all along this election would not be close, it would be a Kerry landslide, and this is why. The Bushies are so lost in their hubris that they simply plan to blame, smear, and lie their way into office, expecting Kerry to be a wimp and let them get away with it.
That was the wrong plan to choose against
tough-ass war hero John Forbes Kerry and his just as tough and not
inclined to put up with crap wife Teresa. .
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