E.J.Dionne, doing an Atwater on Kerry,

[dand]

Lee Atwater's spirit is hovering over this year's campaign, he pulled George the 1st out of a 17% deficit in 1988 by smearing Dukakis, and the Repubs are using the same strategy this year on Kerry.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53583-2004Jul15.html

[punpirate]

1. The source is a registration-only site...

... and because of that, could you provide the salient paragraphs to support the thread title?

Thanks.

[Gunit_Sangh]

2. it's a free registration

and they don't spam you.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. They ask too many questions for me to register there.

n/t

[iowa_democrat]

5. nobody said

you have to tell them the truth when you sign up.

[KoKo]

8. I'm signed up as a "Jane Smith" who lives in a state very far from where

I live. When you sign up you don't have to give your real name or your real zip code. All I give is my age group so they know a demographic of the age of their readers, but the ridiculous thing about those registrations is that very few folks probably give them any real info.

And if you uncheck the box about whether you want they to send you feature stuff you never get any spam to your ISP address. Just make sure to look at the boxes because the sites automatically check it for you, so you have to uncheck.

It's worth it to sign up.

[KoKo]

10. Here is a "Snip" from the article:

But other Bush attacks are right out of the Atwater playbook. Bush has developed a nice, light formula for pushing his "flip-flop" charge against Kerry. "If you disagree with John Kerry on most any issue," Bush told a crowd in Waukesha, Wis., this week, "you may just have caught him on the wrong day." Atwater would warn the Democrats to watch their backs on this one.

On the central issue of the campaign, Bush is understandably pushing the Iraq debate away from the specific -- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, poor postwar planning, etc. -- to the general plane of character and toughness. Bush is using a zinger aimed at all soft and elitist believers in psychobabble. "You can't negotiate with terrorists," Bush says. "You can't sit back and hope that somehow therapy will work and they will change their ways."

Bush even suggests subtly that if the voters toss him from office, they will fail the values test by breaking the country's commitments. The reformist leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush says, "need to hear from America that they can count on the American people. You see, when we give our word, we keep our word." Message: Keep your country's promise. Vote for Bush.

Republican pollster David Winston's helpful definition of the two types of "values" arguments is a good guide to which Atwateresque moves might work this year. There are "values you default to that are appealing to your base, which tend to reinforce an existing belief." And "there are values that are oriented to the middle which tend to be fundamentally optimistic and designed to solve a problem."

[Hugh Akston]

4. Interesting article

It may make us feel better to dismiss this strategy as just another smear campaign by the Bush campaign, but it still leaves the issue of countering this strategy.

Kerry will find it increasingly dificult to strike back at such assertions now that he picked Edwards as his running mate. Kerry made a huge mistake by choosing Edwards, and has sent the wrong message in doing so. Most Americans arent paying much attention to the race at this point, but they are catching the 30 second clips on the news. What are they seeing? A beauty pageant!

If Kerry wants to turn this election into a grandiose version of American Idol, so be it. But the party will take a beating at the polls for it -- some that cannot be afforded after 2000 and 2002. Kerry leveled the playing field on national security with the president, and then handed it back with his veep pick.

[dand]

6. Welcome to DU Hugh,

thanks for a brilliant post, I hope someone from the Kerry campaign is reading it.

[thebigidea]

7. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.

[rfkrocks]

11. Americans want a vice president who can thrill the country

with great oratory-imagine DICK Cheney giving the Gettysburg address-Four score and fucking years ago or As not what your fucking country can do for you-Hugh we can't get any better than having a vice president who awarded a no bid billion dollar contract to the company he just left for office-no that type of ethics is what we deserve-we want more of Dick the deferment sending citizens to die in endless wars that cost the blood and treasure of this country-in wars that hide like a baby from fighting-it is better left to the expendable class-we can continue alienating every last ally on earth in pursuit of a fundamentalist Armageddon orgasm- but no I think John Edwards is presidential compared to the Dick "the deferment"

[checks-n-balances]

9. Whew - I mistakenly thought it said that E.J. himself was doing an Atwater

and thought, "Oh no, not E.J. too"!

Have to run but have bookmarked article for later. Thanks for posting!

[RaulGroom]

12. I have a semi-response to this today

http://raulgroom.blogspot.com