Shot In The Dark: Coals to Newcastle

September 30, 2004

Coals to Newcastle

Jay Reding on Dick Morris' new critique of the Kerry campaign, especially its "all war, all the time" strategy:

As Morris notes, Bush has a double-digit lead on the issue of the war to begin with. Kerry is assuming (and in this he's correct) that in order to win he has to knock down Bush numbers on the war.

The problem with that is that no dove candidate has ever won the Presidency in a time of war. In the midst of Vietnam, when body bags were flying in by the hundreds and the situation was far worse than Iraq is now by an order of magnitude, Richard Nixon still beat the living tar out of his dovish Democratic opponent. In every wartime election, the hawkish candidate always wins.

And John Kerry decided that heâ€™s going to run on the anti-war platform. He's going to try to convince us all that Bush "lied" and "misled" us into war. The problem is that while the radical Democratic anti-war base believes that, nobody else does. To borrow a phrase, this issue does not play well in Peoria. If people don't believe the hysterical screams of "Bush lied"� now, a speech by Kerry won't do it.

Which lends some credence to the notion that Kerry's gone all dovey on us to save the base.

Posted by Mitch at September 30, 2004 07:40 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Anecdotal: My cab driver yesterday is a Vietnam vet (2 tours) and lifelong democrat. He's voting for Bush. He said that they were handing out Purple Hearts in Vieatnam like candy, and offered him one for bonking his head. He refused it because the injury was his own fault (unlike some people we know). He also said that if you truly earned the medals you should be proud of them. He got home from his second hitch in '69. He was working at the Pentagon in '71. I asked if he was aware of Kerry's testimony and how he felt. He was aware of it, but he gave Kerry more of a pass than I thought he would: he said hell, they were young. He and his buddies would work at the Pentagon by day, then change into civies and attend the candlelight vigils to meet girls. He said he would vote for Kerry in peace time. But this is war and you don't 'change horses in mid-stream.' The one thing he got very serious about was how anti-war protesting in the states got a lot of people killed in Vietnam.
He understands exactly what we're up against, and compared it to the much more Draconian (and in his mind effective) way the French dealt with Algerian 'insurgents' in France in the early 60's.
Interesting guy. Bush in a landslide.

Posted by: chris at September 30, 2004 10:13 AM

If Dick Morris says this strategy is bad, then Kerry needs to stick to it like glue.

Dick Morris is wrong 99.2% of the time.

Posted by: Jeff Fecke at September 30, 2004 05:39 PM