Why isn't Kerry doing well? He's too liberal.

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Why isn't Kerry doing well? He's too liberal.

Postby lukpac » Thu May 20, 2004 11:06 am

Or so claims Bill O'liely:

John Kerry's Dilemma

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

By Bill O'Reilly

Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thank you for watching us tonight.

John Kerry's dilemma, that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points" memo. A new "Newsweek (search)" poll says President Bush's job approval rating has slipped to 42 percent, the lowest of his tenure in office. However, the same poll says that the president and John Kerry remain tied in their race for the top job.

Now you would think Kerry would be surging ahead because the president is saddled with chaos in Iraq and punishing prices for gasoline, but that's not the case. Why? Two reasons.

First, Senator Kerry's plan to fight terrorism is soft, saying the U.N. is going to help us is a pipe dream. And most Americans don't want to put their safety in the hands of that ineffective organization.

Second, is the far left a factor? Just 19 percent of Americans define themselves as liberal. And most Americans actually fear the far left because of the drastic changes that group wants to impose on America. Also, far left tactics are often deplorable and offensive to many everyday Americans, who basically feel the U.S.A. is a good decent country.

Here's some examples. Writing today in the "L.A. Times," liberal bomb thrower Robert Scheer (search) says, "In the end, the irony is grim. The U.S. military bans openly gay soldiers, but apparently does not effectively screen out heterosexual sadists."

Is that absurd or what? Condemn the American military and tying the Iraqi abuse scandal to the gay issue? Come on.

In "The Boston Globe" it gets worse. Columnist Derek Jackson (search) ties the scandal into American race relations. "What happened in Iraqi is a natural extension of the humiliation that has gone on for two decades in this country...the abusing soldiers and the commanders who let it happen assumed that they were dealing with people who had no voice. So thought the Los Angeles police who clubbed [Rodney] King in 1991...

How about former Clinton adviser Sydney Blumenthal (search), who wrote, "Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons."

Now that kind of hysterical analysis is the hallmark of the far left, which embraces propagandists like Michael Moore (search) and his ilk. That doesn't play in Peoria or most or places where Americans value tradition and believe their country stands for freedom and decency.

Wesley Clark's presidential run was derailed by his embrace of Moore. And John Kerry has a similar problem. Many Americans are concerned that he might ally himself with the liberal fringe. And that alarms them.

Also, it doesn't help much that a lot of the money backing the Dems is coming from certified extremists like George Soros (search). We'll get to him a little bit later on. So that's why the polls remain so tight. Senator Kerry must decide which choir he will sing to, because if he doesn't decide, independent thinking Americans might well tune him out, no matter what George Bush does.

And that's "The Memo."
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby lukpac » Thu May 20, 2004 11:13 am

BTW...if Bill is so "fair and balanced", why is he always bashing the "liberal left" but not the hard right? The far right is arguably *much* more inflammatory with their rhetoric, yet apparently that isn't a problem.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Rspaight » Thu May 20, 2004 2:46 pm

Right. His claim that "most Americans fear the far left" is an odd one. My guess would be that if you put specific far-left and far-right policy proposals in front of people, without identifying them as "liberal" or "conservative", about an equal number would be appalled by each.

Ryan
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney

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Postby lukpac » Fri May 28, 2004 9:22 am

"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby lukpac » Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:05 am

I'd like to know when it became a bad thing to be a liberal. Bush can tout his "conservative values day in and day out, but saying someone is liberal is like a mark of death. Why can't/shouldn't the Dems tout their "liberal values"?

I have a feeling that the majority of Americans don't really know what it means to be a "liberal," but they are afraid of it because the right has demonized the word.

On a related note:

Letter From America: Real Kerry doesn't fit any liberal caricature
Peter S. Canellos The Boston Globe
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

WASHINGTON John Kerry's version of Madonna's "Reinvention" tour began last week with the selection of John Edwards as his running mate and will culminate in about two weeks with his acceptance speech at the FleetCenter. Kerry's emergence from the shadows of the campaign trail occurs amid growing evidence that the country is open to an alternative to President George W. Bush but doesn't have a clear picture of Kerry. Republicans have been sketching furiously to fill that blank page, drawing from a collection of liberal caricatures the way a tattoo artist chooses which dragon to paint on a fleshy forearm.

Meanwhile, real-life liberals have some qualms of their own. They've watched their supposedly liberal standard-bearer come out against gay marriage, declare that life begins at conception, join Bush in endorsing Israel's refusal even to negotiate over a Palestinian right of return, and slash back his promises on college aid and national service.

Then, last week, Kerry declared that he was in touch with the "conservative values" of the heartland.

Don't expect any uprisings at the FleetCenter in Boston during the Democratic convention, even if Kerry gives the crowd even less to cheer about than the Bruins or the Celtics. Except for a few Massachusetts unions, the traditional Democratic agitators have decided to sublimate their demands to the purpose of defeating Bush.

Still, both sides are eager to discover Kerry's true north, and the location seems likely to disappoint both the Republican caricaturists and liberal idealists: Kerry isn't much of a liberal at all.

He's got a strong contrarian streak and has long sought to shake free of party dogma.

His skepticism of any received wisdom was duly earned in the Vietnam War, when he followed his own path and emerged morally unscathed - just about the only prominent figure of the era to have done so.

As both soldier and protester, he escaped the former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey's guilt over never having spoken out about civilian casualties, and he lacks the sense of moral compromise that follows those like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush who made decisions that kept them off the front lines.

Kerry's 20-year voting record in the Senate points in the liberal direction, but not all the time.

The National Journal assessment used to support Republican talking points and the Boston Herald's inimitable "Left of Ted" headline - using Ted Kennedy as a fixed point on the political map, like a 7-Eleven convenience store on the corner of Bleeding Heart Boulevard - is incomplete.

The National Journal rates senators in three major areas - economic policy, foreign policy and social policy - but only if they voted on more than half the issues. Kerry spent most of 2003 on the campaign trail and amassed only enough votes to be assessed on economics. He wasn't even rated on foreign or social issues.

In other years, when he's been present to vote, Kerry has veered between his party's left wing and moderate center.

But even when Kerry chalked up a liberal voting record, he left plenty of evidence to suggest he was eager to break ranks, yet kept getting yanked back by the demands of his left-leaning state.

In 1992, before Clinton's Sister Souljah attack, Kerry made his own highly publicized break with liberal theology on race, bemoaning the lack of personal responsibility in poor urban neighborhoods and suggesting that affirmative action sent the wrong message to the underclass.

After days of rebukes up in Boston, Kerry didn't back down, but applied so many layers of conciliatory clothing to his remarks that any sharp edges got covered.

Then, after the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, Kerry acted like a man unchained. He professed to be "delighted by the shakeup," which has tabled the liberal agenda for a decade.

Whether joining with Republicans to promote a budget-cutting plan or staring with incredulousness at a roomful of Boston reporters who questioned why he believed openly gay soldiers would harm the morale of the military, Kerry never seemed so happy as when challenging his hometown ideology.

Likewise, his efforts to expose the Reagan administration's "secret wars" in Central America - portrayed by Republicans as softness on communism - were more an expression of his prosecutor's zeal to uncover lies and inconsistencies.

Like the Republican moderates Arlen Specter and Rudolph Giuliani, and Democratic moderates Joseph Lieberman and Joe Biden, Kerry enjoys wagging a finger at powerful interests of any type, demanding truth and transparency.

Presidential campaigns either find their moment or dissolve, and Kerry's insistence on a rigorous means rather than a prescribed end provides a natural contrast to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. It doesn't offer an ideological counterweight to the Republicans so much as a side route around ideological roadblocks.

The relatively simple, unexciting guideposts Kerry has promised - a return to "pay as you go" economics, a foreign policy based on vigilance but also rigorous analysis - is about all there is to his proposed administration.

John Kerry is neither a liberal dragon nor a liberal angel.

The Boston Globe
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Patrick M » Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:59 pm

Bill Frist, cat lover wrote:There is no ideological balance, I believe, in the choice of John Edwards. When you have John Kerry, who's the most liberal person in the United States Senate, and then you pick somebody who is equally liberal, there's no ideological balance," Sen. Frist said. "I think he (Edwards) is the fourth-most liberal person, to the left of Sen. (Edward) Kennedy and to the left of Sen. (Hillary) Clinton.

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Postby Patrick M » Wed Jul 14, 2004 3:12 pm