Rivals Mine Kerry Senate Years for Material to Slow Him Down(the GOP FILE!

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/politics/campaign/25RECO.html

Rivals Mine Kerry Senate Years for Material to Slow Him Down
By TODD S. PURDUM


ASHINGTON, Jan. 24 — The moment John Kerry began to seem like the candidate to watch in the Iowa caucuses, the campaigns of his Democratic rivals Howard Dean and Richard A. Gephardt swiftly used a handful of Mr. Kerry's decade-old Senate votes and statements against ethanol and agricultural subsidies to attack him as not supportive of Iowa's essential industry.
<SNIP>

For example, at the end of the cold war, Mr. Kerry advocated scaling back the Central Intelligence Agency, but after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he complained about a lack of intelligence capability. In the 1980's, he opposed the death penalty for terrorists who killed Americans abroad, but he now supports the death penalty for terrorist acts. In the 1990's, he joined with Republican senators to sponsor proposals to end tenure for public school teachers and allow direct grants to religion-based charities, measures that many Democratic groups opposed. In 1997, he voted to require elderly people with higher incomes to pay a larger share of Medicare premiums.

The record is susceptible to two broad strands of attack. Mr. Kerry's rival Democrats point to a series of shifting stands on issues, like his qualified praise for the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and his vote authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq. They say these are at odds with his claim to be the "real deal" Democratic alternative to Mr. Bush, capable of "standing up for people and taking on powerful interests," as he says in his stump speech.
<SNIP

"Whether it's economic policy, national security policy or social issues, John Kerry is out of sync with most voters," the Republican national chairman, Ed Gillespie, said in a speech on Friday.
Mr. Kerry's spokesman, David Wade, said the senator was "proud of his independence and unashamed that his resistance to orthodoxy leaves him hard to pigeonhole," adding that he had "fought a lifetime for what's right even when it's neither popular nor predictable." He added, "Ed Gillespie may be the last guy left who doesn't realize it's George Bush who's out of touch with the American people."

<snip>A Kerry campaign aide said that if the campaign was forced to defend itself, it was "armed with a treasure-trove of votes that prove John Kerry's commitment to strong national defense, a stronger intelligence-gathering operation than George Bush has delivered, and to a long record of fighting the deficit, reforming education and restructuring welfare."<snip>

[Nicholas_J]

1. Dupe

This has been duped three times yesterday, and once today

[papau]

2. Thanks - I obviously did not see the original post (s)

:-)

[RedEarth]

3. Thanks for posting this article....I hadn't seen it yet.......nt