Kerry looking to dissatisfied Republicans for an edge

[AmyStrange]

Kerry looking to dissatisfied Republicans for an edge
Targets voters upset with Bush in first term
By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff | June 11, 2004

FROM: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/06/11/kerry_looking_to_dissatisfied_republicans_for_an_edge/
WASHINGTON -- When John F. Kerry speaks to a town hall of invited guests or a hotel ballroom of $2,000-a-head donors, the Democratic standard-bearer usually has a good idea of how many Republicans are in the room.

Not the stealth protesters -- although a few sometimes slip in -- but rather, the swing voters who supported George W. Bush in 2000 or traditionally vote for GOP candidates, yet find themselves ambivalent or even angry about the direction of Bush's first term and reluctant to support a second one. Kerry aides keep a head count of these new faces in the crowd, and try to enlist them afterward in hopes of launching a Republicans-for-Kerry movement by this fall.

With Kerry and Bush virtually tied in the polls, and both men eager to broaden their base of supporters, the voters that Kerry increasingly and explicitly exhorts in battleground states are ''thoughtful Republicans," ''independent-minded Republicans," and ''non-Bush Republicans" -- and more subtly, the Independent voters who like bipartisan, all-together-now politicking. Kerry regularly hails GOP iconoclasts -- ''Teddy Roosevelt would scream right now" at Bush's economic and war policies, Kerry said at a Pennsylvania fund-raiser; ''my friend John McCain," he often name-drops -- and calls himself an ''entrepreneurial Democrat" as he seeks the crucial crossover votes that Ronald Reagan enjoyed from so-called Reagan Democrats.

''I know there are some Republicans here -- I want to talk to Republicans all across the country," Kerry told about 200 guests at a Las Vegas fund-raiser last month. ''For anyone here who considers themselves a conservative, let me just remind you: There is nothing conservative about driving up deficits as far as the eye can see and saddling our children with more debt. And there is nothing conservative about allowing your administration to flagrantly cross over that brilliant line drawn by the founding fathers that divides affairs of church and state. And there is nothing conservative about allowing your attorney general to disrespect our own constitution -- our civil rights and civil liberties."

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[Southsideirish]

1. I guess this is why the "Wooing of McCain" came about. nt