Did Kerry cheat at Debate #1?
Sure looks and sounds like it.
I tend to agree with Jim Geraghty that this is something that, like Rathergate and the Swiftboat Vets furor, the Bushies won't touch and will leave to the blogosphere instead, particularly given how easily their complaining about it would be so easily spinnable as "whining."
[UPDATE: Fox News is now saying that what Kerry whipped out of his jacket was a "black pen," not folded notes. Of course, it's difficult to believe that a "black pen" would look like folded notes unless he'd been doodling all over them with a magic marker or something. And in any case, bringing a pen with which to make notes was against the established rules as well. Six of one...]
On the other hand, though, the Kerry campaign is lodging that very charge, and then some:
"'Kerry did not cheat,' said the Kerry insider. [Despite the clear video evidence to the contrary] “This is more lies from Republicans, who are hoping for a quick change of subject away from the President’s performance, and the new polls.”
The "new polls" that are laughably skewed toward Kerry. [The American Thinker has more analysis on Newsweek's "creative" survey.]
They've even fielded a new ad that furthers this line of attack:
"Narrator: “George Bush lost the debate. Now he’s lying about it. This is what you heard John Kerry really say:
John Kerry: “The president always has the right for pre-emptive strike.”
John Kerry: “I will hunt and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.”
Which is rather like saying something like, "I love my wife so much I would beat myself to death for her," and then someone else claiming that what you REALLY said was, "I would love to beat my wife to death."
Blogs for Bush restored the context to each remark (with the contradiction in italics):
1) "The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.
"No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.
"But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
2) "I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.
"But we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein, and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein."
So, the bottom line question would, once again, seem to be, "What does President Bush have to lose by going after Kerry?" Dignity and class and "remaining above it all" is fine and good, but where did that get GDub's dad twelve years ago? And if the Kerryites, pressing an advantage they're trying to make real by so doing, are going to propagandize against Bush as whining about Kerry's evident debate cheating anyway, what does keeping the proverbial kid gloves on accomplish?
Just because each previous clumsy, hamfisted left-wing propaganda truncheon in this campaign has fallen apart doesn't mean the next one will. And the gambit of spinning yourself from fictional momentum to the real thing can work - it's how Bill Clinton won his second term.
George W. Bush's biggest campaign liability has been his passivity. He would be more than well advised to discard that trait in the next thirty days if he doesn't want to see his grip on his own second term slip away.
I tend to agree with Jim Geraghty that this is something that, like Rathergate and the Swiftboat Vets furor, the Bushies won't touch and will leave to the blogosphere instead, particularly given how easily their complaining about it would be so easily spinnable as "whining."
[UPDATE: Fox News is now saying that what Kerry whipped out of his jacket was a "black pen," not folded notes. Of course, it's difficult to believe that a "black pen" would look like folded notes unless he'd been doodling all over them with a magic marker or something. And in any case, bringing a pen with which to make notes was against the established rules as well. Six of one...]
On the other hand, though, the Kerry campaign is lodging that very charge, and then some:
"'Kerry did not cheat,' said the Kerry insider. [Despite the clear video evidence to the contrary] “This is more lies from Republicans, who are hoping for a quick change of subject away from the President’s performance, and the new polls.”
The "new polls" that are laughably skewed toward Kerry. [The American Thinker has more analysis on Newsweek's "creative" survey.]
They've even fielded a new ad that furthers this line of attack:
"Narrator: “George Bush lost the debate. Now he’s lying about it. This is what you heard John Kerry really say:
John Kerry: “The president always has the right for pre-emptive strike.”
John Kerry: “I will hunt and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.”
Which is rather like saying something like, "I love my wife so much I would beat myself to death for her," and then someone else claiming that what you REALLY said was, "I would love to beat my wife to death."
Blogs for Bush restored the context to each remark (with the contradiction in italics):
1) "The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.
"No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.
"But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
2) "I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.
"But we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein, and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein."
So, the bottom line question would, once again, seem to be, "What does President Bush have to lose by going after Kerry?" Dignity and class and "remaining above it all" is fine and good, but where did that get GDub's dad twelve years ago? And if the Kerryites, pressing an advantage they're trying to make real by so doing, are going to propagandize against Bush as whining about Kerry's evident debate cheating anyway, what does keeping the proverbial kid gloves on accomplish?
Just because each previous clumsy, hamfisted left-wing propaganda truncheon in this campaign has fallen apart doesn't mean the next one will. And the gambit of spinning yourself from fictional momentum to the real thing can work - it's how Bill Clinton won his second term.
George W. Bush's biggest campaign liability has been his passivity. He would be more than well advised to discard that trait in the next thirty days if he doesn't want to see his grip on his own second term slip away.
posted by JASmius at 11:32 PM
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