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host · 09-06-2004, 12:13 PM

Bush supporters and Kerry bashers, are you really going to let Rove manipulate you and your vote again in 2004?
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1207591/posts">
But Rove has a record of attacking opponents' strengths, not weaknesses. Kerry has faced a full-frontal assault by Republican leaders and shadowy surrogate groups, such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry, a triple Purple Heart winner, has been left desperately fighting allegations that he betrayed fellow veterans by turning against the war.</a>

In addition to what has been reported in late August concerning McCain's motivation for immediately defending kerry against the Swift Boat Vet attacks on his
military record; that during the 2000 campaign, Karl Rove was the architect of a strategy of attacking McCain's strong reputation as a Viet Nam POW hero, vs. Bush's
questionable military record of spotty service in a Texas Air National Guard "champagne
unit", by publicizing information that questioned McCain's mental stability after a six
year period of incarceration and periodic torture conducted by the North Vietnamese
in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison for captured American pilots, there is this account, reported in 2000, as to the strategy used by the Bush campaign to destroy
McCain as the leading primary candidate:

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/02/21/knuckles.html"><h2>Read
my knuckles</h2>

<IMG SRC="cover.gif" ALT="cover image" ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="107" HEIGHT="138" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="5">

<h3>To win big in South Carolina, Bush found his anger, battered

McCain--and moved sharply to the right. Will moderates still buy

his compassion pitch?</h3>

By Eric Pooley



February 21, 2000 

Web posted at: 4:11 p.m. EST (2111 GMT)




The crowd in Hilton Head last Wednesday morning wasn't much to

brag about--roughly 250 people had shown up at a local marina to

hear George W. Bush--but the candidate was pumped just the same.

In the big debate the night before, he'd finally managed to get

the better of John McCain. More important, Bush had unleashed

the dogs of war against his rival--saturation TV and radio

attacks, hundreds of thousands of telephone and direct-mail

blasts, everything short of leaflets dropping from the skies

above South Carolina. The dogs were tearing into McCain, raising

questions about his character and dedication to the conservative

cause. Bush told the crowd, in his new fire-in-the-belly style,

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism, of polls

and principles, come and join this campaign." His slip of the

tongue about being tired of principles hinted at what happened

in South Carolina: Bush believed he would be finished if he lost

the state, so he did what it took to win. A country tune that

played at the Hilton Head rally neatly summed up Bush's

approach. Its refrain: "I'm really good at gettin' by."




Want a reformer? Bush asked his party in South Carolina. I'll be

your reformer--but a safer and more predictable one than McCain.

Want a fighter who can take it to Al Gore? I can play

rough--look what I did to my Republican rival. I can court the

radical right and come out shining brightly. I'm really good at

gettin' by.




So good, in fact, that Bush did more than get by in South

Carolina. He trounced McCain by 11 points overall, beating him

handily among nearly all age groups, both genders and most

income levels--among everyone, in fact, except veterans and new

G.O.P-primary voters. South Carolina Republicans rejected

McCain's message that "this party has lost its way," voting for

Bush almost 3 to 1. The independents and Democrats who made up

about 40% of the electorate went to McCain 2 to 1, but there

weren't enough of them to keep things close. Exit polls show

that a majority of voters saw Bush as the "real reformer"--an

astonishing coup for the Texas Governor, who adopted McCain's

mantle of reform just two weeks ago. Of those who believed

McCain was the true reformer, more than a third voted for Bush

anyway. For all its demographic changes in recent years, South

Carolina remains wary of mavericks and loyal to the G.O.P

establishment. It was the third consecutive time a Republican

front runner had lost New Hampshire and regained his balance in

South Carolina. The fire wall held.




Bush's slashing tactics--ferocious even by South Carolina's

down-and-dirty standards--don't fully account for the size of

his victory. Bush managed to drive McCain's negative ratings

from 5 to 30 in a month, but he also benefited from his own more

serious and improvisatory style. Gone were the photo ops of Bush

bowling and snowmobiling, replaced by substantive town-hall

forums that looked a lot like McCain's. What helped Bush most of

all was his hard charge to the right on social issues: he

boosted conservative Christian turnout to record levels and

collected two-thirds of their votes. But the things he said and

did to win them could cost him down the road.




The compassionate, big-tent Republicanism on which Bush

campaigned for months became threatening to him when the tent

started filling up with pro-McCain independents. So he called on

the right wing of his party to guard the doors of the tent,

warning that Democrats were conspiring to hijack the primary.

The man who prides himself on being "a uniter, not a divider"

won by pitting social conservatives against moderates. He kicked

off his South Carolina assault at Bob Jones University, a place

where interracial dating is officially prohibited. He all but

told listeners on Christian radio that openly gay people would

not find spots in his administration. He said he wasn't going to

"tear down" his opponent, but his campaign literature told

voters that "McCain says one thing but does another," and it

distorted many of McCain's positions--charging, for example,

that McCain wants to remove the pro-life plank from the G.O.P

platform. That isn't true, and among religious conservatives, it

was a napalm blast at McCain.




Those tactics helped Bush win South Carolina, but they could

alienate the voters he needs in the fall if he secures the

nomination. McCain hammered that message home in his unforgiving

concession speech, saying Bush's tactics would give the country

"Speaker Gephardt and President Gore." McCain was warning that

in the eyes of many Americans, Bush has become the candidate of

Bob Jones, the Confederacy, the National Rifle Association and

the National Right to Life Committee. And though Bush proved in

South Carolina that he can change his spots as nimbly as Bill

Clinton does, he must now show that he can change them

back--something that is a good deal harder to do.




Three weeks ago, when McCain began comparing himself to a Star

Wars hero--"I'm Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death

Star"--the analogy seemed overblown. But by primary day in South

Carolina, it seemed more than apt.




Bush's Death Star strategy was hatched on Feb. 2, the day after

he lost New Hampshire to McCain by 18 points. His top advisers

met in a panic at a hotel in Greenville, S.C. Not only was

Bush's air of inevitability shattered--McCain was galloping from

40 points behind in South Carolina to a dead heat--but all their

presumptions about the race had proved wrong. They had spent

months trying to plug the stature gap and build an image of Bush

as a candidate who could unite the party--and then they were

blindsided by a Republican at war with its leaders. At that

meeting, Bush's team realized he had to forget his promises to

run a "hopeful and optimistic and very positive"

campaign--promises that had been easy to make last fall, when he

seemed to be waltzing unopposed to the nomination. Bush agreed

to do whatever it would take to win. And in South Carolina,

"whatever it takes" has a colorful lineage.




The architect of whatever-it-takes politics, the late Republican

strategist Lee Atwater, helped turn South Carolina, his home

state, into the most reliably Republican place in the country.

He did so on behalf of George Bush's father in 1988 by

exploiting the fears of conservative whites and honing the

tactics of search-and-destroy politics--black arts he apologized

for in 1991 as he was dying of a brain tumor. Bush's South

Carolina team, led by former Governor Carroll Campbell and his

onetime chief of staff Warren Tompkins, are masters of

Atwater-style politics. Bush and his chief strategist, Karl

Rove, were both close to Atwater over the years. Atwater's

spirit was hovering over the meeting when Bush's advisers

decided it was time to "drive up McCain's negatives." Though

Bush had always prided himself on being a positive

candidate--even in 1994 when Governor Ann Richards of Texas was

calling him "Shrub" and goading him to fight--this time he let

his team go to work. "We play it different down here," one of

Bush's top South Carolina advisers told Time last week. "We're

not dainty, if you get my drift. We're used to playin' rough."




Bush's team devised a two-pronged strategy aimed at shoring up

his image and conservative credentials while carpet-bombing

McCain with attacks that portrayed the Arizonan as a hypocrite

and a closet liberal. The first part of the plan would be

carried out by Bush himself, who had a "wimp factor" to contend

with. To allay post-New Hampshire doubts that he wasn't tough

enough to go the distance, the Governor attacked McCain in a

series of press conferences beginning just days after New

Hampshire. Bush started out by calling McCain a Republican who

took "Democrat" positions favored by "Bill Clinton and Al Gore"

on issues from tax cuts to campaign-finance reform. He stepped

up the assault during the next week, holding bash-of-the-day

press conferences for four straight days. His barrage against

McCain was always the first order of business. He began one

press conference by saying, "I want to continue this discussion

about saying one thing and doing another."




Each of Bush's points was meant to show McCain as a hypocrite:

on public financing of campaigns; on allowing incumbents to

"roll over" their campaign war chests (and never mind that Bush

had done the same thing); on whether he favored tax hikes in the

past. On each occasion, Bush aides would pass out, fax and

e-mail memos documenting McCain's alleged hypocrisies. And

surrogates--Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Strom Thurmond,

Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler, Attorney General Charlie Condon

and former Governors Campbell and David Beasley--were dispatched

to deliver the message in harsher terms on TV and radio. Outside

groups--the National Right to Life Committee, Americans for Tax

Reform, the National Smokers Alliance--were counted upon to

hammer McCain with incendiary radio and TV spots of their own.




The strategy carried risks--notably that Bush would start to

seem not just tough but Visigothic. That problem was solved when

McCain made his one colossal blunder of the campaign--a move

Bush aides call "a gift."




The gift was a TV commercial in which the Arizona Senator looked

into the camera and charged that Bush "twists the truth like

Clinton." The spot went too far--in South Carolina's Republican

circles, being compared to Clinton is worse than being compared

to Satan himself. Putting it on the air undermined McCain's

claim that he was above politics as usual and freed Bush to

amplify his attack strategies while muddying the waters on the

question of which candidate was hitting below the belt. Says a

Bush aide: "When he truly crossed the line, that's when we could

go after him. It was a huge opportunity."




For the rest of the campaign, Bush used the ad as a smoke screen

to obscure his assaults on McCain. His team quickly cut an

effective response ad, with a nice kicker: "Disagree with me,

fine," it said, "but do not challenge my integrity." It was his

best performance yet, and Bush used variations on the theme in

the final debate and in his press conferences. For instance,

when reporters challenged him on his failure to speak out

against the racist policies of Bob Jones University, he jutted

his jaw and said, "Don't you judge my heart." The Bush camp kept

the spot on the air through primary day--long after McCain had

taken his attack ad off the air--because it implied that McCain

was still playing dirty even after he had committed himself to

sending only positive messages.




Behind the smoke screen, Bush's allies on the right stepped up

their assault. The National Smokers Alliance warned that "if

straight talk is the issue, John McCain isn't the answer."

Christian-right leader Pat Robertson threatened that "a large

portion of the Republican base would walk away" if McCain was

the nominee. Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, chairman of

the House impeachment proceedings, taped a phone message for

100,000 voters, implicitly criticizing McCain for wanting to

change the G.O.P's abortion plank to include exceptions for rape

and incest--exceptions Bush also supports, though Hyde didn't

mention that. The National Right to Life Committee issued a mass

mailing warning that McCain "voted repeatedly to use tax dollars

for experiments that use body parts from aborted babies." On the

front of the leaflet was a photograph of a baby with the words,

"This little guy wants you to vote for George W. Bush."





Phone calls from Bush polling operations appear to have been

attacks masquerading as opinion surveys--so-called push polls.

These calls distorted McCain's record--exaggerating his role in

the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, for example--in an

attempt to push voters away from him. Though the Bush campaign

claims only 300 of the calls were made in South Carolina, Bush's

Michigan pollster, Fred Steeper, told Time last week that his

firm had placed several thousand such calls in his state.

Steeper says he has stopped making the calls.




Former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, a Bush

strategist, used his firm to smother the 400,000 self-described

Christian conservatives in the state with negative phone calls

and mailings about McCain. ("He claims he's conservative, but

he's pushed for higher taxes and waffled on protecting innocent

human life.") In this blitz of mail and phone calling, Bush was

portrayed as far more socially conservative than he describes

himself at rallies. Asked why Bush almost never brought up his

pro-life position in his appearances before South Carolina

voters, a top Bush adviser said, "This is a message that needs

to be narrowcasted." In other words, they didn't want moderates

up North hearing what they were saying to conservatives down

South.




To see how Bush's words went further to the right as he

narrowcast them, consider the way he worked the issue of gay

rights. In the debate last Tuesday, Bush said he had refused to

meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, the G.O.P's largest gay

organization, because "they had made a commitment to John

McCain." When McCain said the group had not endorsed him, Bush

replied, "It doesn't matter." To conservatives, though, it

mattered a great deal. A few days later, a Baptist church in

Kentucky began faxing a flyer to South Carolina radio stations,

railing against "John McCain's fag army." (Both McCain and Bush

support the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the

military.) The Bush campaign said it had nothing to do with the

flyer. But the Governor repeated his anti-gay message during an

on-air interview with a Christian radio station in Charleston,

implying that he wouldn't appoint openly gay people to spots in

his administration. "An openly known homosexual is somebody who

probably wouldn't share my philosophy," he said.




The most corrosive material of all came from groups and

individuals independent of Bush's campaign. A Bob Jones

professor named Richard Hand sent out an e-mail falsely alleging

that McCain had sired two children out of wedlock. A flyer

distributed at McCain rallies went after Cindy McCain for her

addiction to pain killers a decade ago and her admission that

she stole them from a clinic where she worked. Phone-call

campaigns targeted McCain's broken first marriage. And a

pro-Confederate flag group called Keep It Flying, founded just

last week, sent out 250,000 pieces of misleading mail about the

candidate's position on the flag flying above the state capitol.

Both McCain and Bush ducked the issue, but the flyer said, "Of

the major candidates, only George Bush has refused to call the

Confederate flag a racist symbol." In a bit of payback last

Saturday, McCain's camp decided to send copies of the flyer to

African-Americans throughout Michigan. "We'll see if Bush can

run as a Dixiecrat in Michigan and everywhere else," says McCain

political director John Weaver.




Against this deluge, McCain fought back with a positive TV ad

comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. But McCain's

morning-in-America spot was airing once for every six Bush

commercials. McCain got some help from Gary Bauer, the Christian

conservative candidate who folded his campaign after New

Hampshire and endorsed McCain last week. Bauer is fighting Reed

for supremacy among Christian conservatives, but last week he

lost the battle. He wasn't popular enough to sway many votes.

McCain's network of veterans tried to counter Bush's carpet

bombing with a grass-roots ground campaign, but by Saturday

morning, McCain knew in his bones that it was over.




In the hallway outside his hotel room that morning, McCain

turned to his closest aide, Mark Salter. "We're going to lose

this, aren't we?" McCain asked. Salter didn't have to answer.

Inside the room, people started eating cold pizza from the night

before, shaking their heads over reports that the state G.O.P

had failed to open 21 polling places in black areas of

Greenville. Later the team sat down and went over the exit

polling. The candidate wanted to know about the attacks, so his

ally, South Carolina Representative Lindsey Graham, ran through

the list of the body blows McCain had absorbed. Cindy McCain

broke into tears. "It's all right, Cindy," said McCain. "We can

take it." By the time he had digested the results, McCain was

smiling broadly--the mirror image of primary night in New

Hampshire, when he had won so big yet couldn't manage a smile.




McCain still sees the battle that raged in South Carolina--and

that this week spreads to Michigan and beyond--as a chance for

an epochal party realignment, a ritual of G.O.P purification.

But his party may not be ready for the purity he has in mind. As

Bush and his aides see it, the party feud caused by McCain's

surge is merely a minor, passing unpleasantness, not a long-term

problem. And they believe the damage Bush did to his own image

in South Carolina can be easily fixed. Says a senior Bush

adviser: "We'll patch things up pretty quickly."




Not if McCain can help it. Despite the stinging loss, he went

roaring out of South Carolina vowing that "our crusade grows

stronger" and pitting "my optimistic and welcoming conservatism"

against Bush's "negative message of fear." He added, "I want the

presidency in the best way, not the worst way." Bush, stripped

now of all his laid-back affectation, wants it any way he can

get it. He's very good at gettin' by.



<h5>--Reported by James Carney

with Bush, John F. Dickerson with McCain and Maggie

Sieger/Detroit

</h5></a>
Do you Bush apologists really know who you cheerlead for ? The president only makes public appearances at presumably supportive military installations and at
rallies where all attendees indergo background checks and are pre-screened for
loyalty and to submit questions in advance that they will ask Bush. As of April, 2004, Bush gave only 1/7 the number of press conferences that his father held in the same number of months in office. Even at the eleven press conferences which Bush held, some were limited to pre-submitted reporters' questions.....no spontaneity, no surprises, just carefully scripted performances.....a president packaged for the media, designed, IMO, to make up for severe deficiencies in ability, to deceive the people.
Jefferson said:

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."

 Is Bush facing the people "to set them right as to facts" ? I think not:
<a href="http://www.theweekbehind.com/articles/liars.html">
(As of April 2, 2004.....)
The net-net of Bush's first three years in office is one of the most closed off -- but "on message" -- administrations in history. So far, Bush has held only 11 press conferences -- compared with 77 by his father in the first three years of his administation, according to Frank Rich in The New York Times. Even Richard Nixon, deemed one of the most secretive presidents of our time, held 23 over the same period.</a>
As for your buying the oft repeated Rove designed strategy (if something is repeated often enough, the sheeple will believe it) to smear Kerry as the "flip-flopper":



Bush was against campaign finance reform; now he's for it.
 
Bush was against a Homeland Security Department; now he's for it.
 
Bush was against a 9/11 commission; now he's for it.
 
Bush was against an Iraq WMD investigation; now he's for it.
 
Bush was against nation building; now he's for it.

 
Bush was against deficits; now he's for them.
 
Bush was for free trade; then he was for tariffs on steel, and now he's against them again.
 
Bush was against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; now he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.
 
Bush was for states' rights to decide on gay marriage; now he is for changing the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage.
 
Bush said he would provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency); then he doesn't.
 
Bush said that "help is on the way" to the military; then he cuts their benefits and health care.
 
Bush claimed to be in favor of environmental protection; then he secretly approved oil drilling on Padre Island in Texas and other places and took many more anti-environmental actions.
 
Bush said he is the "education president;" then he refused to fully fund key education programs and rarely does his homework, such as read position papers so he will be more knowledgeable on issues.
 

Bush said that him being governor of Texas for six years was enough political experience to be president of the U.S.; then he criticized Sen. John Edwards for not having enough experience after Edwards had served six years in the U.S. Senate.
 
During the 2000 campaign, Bush said there were too many lawsuits being filed; then during the Florida recount, he was the first to file a lawsuit to stop the legal counting of votes after Gore took advantage of Florida law to ask for a recount.
 
On Nov. 7, 2000, the Bush campaign supported Florida county officials drawing up new copies of some 10,000 spoiled absentee votes in 26 Republican-leaning counties that the machines did not read and marking them for the candidates when they showed "clear intent;" they opposed doing the same thing after Nov. 7 when Gore asked for such recounts. Bush dominated absentee balloting in Florida by a two-to-one margin.
 
Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he did not have a "litmus test" for judges he appointed to be against abortion; then he mostly appointed judges who were against abortion.
 
In the early 1990s, Bush led a campaign to raise taxes in Arlington, Texas, to build a new baseball stadium for the team he partly owned; he later criticized politicians for supporting tax increases – after he got rich by selling the team with the new stadium to a wealthy campaign contributor.
 
Bush opposed the U.S. negotiating with North Korea; now he supports it.
 
Bush went to the racist and segregationist Bob Jones University in South Carolina; then he said he shouldn't have.
 
Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq; later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.
 
Bush first said the "mission accomplished" Iraqi banner was put up by the sailors; he later admitted it was done by his advance team.

 
Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the U.S.; after meeting with Mexican President Fox, he decided against it.
 
Bush was opposed to Rice testifying in front of the 9/11 commission citing "separation of powers;" then he was for it.
 
Bush was against Ba'ath party members holding office or government jobs in Iraq; now he's for it.
 
Bush said we must not appease terrorists; then he lifted trade sanctions on admitted terrorist Mohammar Quaddafi and Pakistan, which pardoned its official who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
 
Bush said he would wait until after the Nov. election to ask for more money for the war effort; then he decided he needed it before the election, after all.
 
Bush said, "Leaving Iraq prematurely would only embolden the terrorists and increase the danger to America." His administration now says that U.S. troops will pull out of Iraq when the new provisional authority asks. Then he said they'll stay "as long as needed" again. Now he's
saying that the Iraqis can ask the troops to leave, and they will. Or is he?
 
The Bush administration officials said that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to "enemy combatants." Now they claims they do.
 
Bush officials said before the Iraq invasion that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to U.S. security and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and even nuclear weapons; after the invasion, they denied saying the word "imminent" and saying that Iraq had WMDs and nuclear weapons, even though they were caught on tape making such statements.
 

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - George W. Bush, Sept. 13, 2001
 
"I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
 
</td>

</tr>
<a href="http://www.rushlimbaughonline.com/articles/bushflipflopper.htm">http://www.rushlimbaughonline.com/articles/bushflipflopper.htm</a>

09-06-2004, 12:13 PM	#33 (permalink)
host Banned	<br><br><br> <b>Bush supporters and Kerry bashers, are you really going to let Rove manipulate you and your vote again in 2004?</b> <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1207591/posts"> But Rove has a record of attacking opponents' strengths, not weaknesses. Kerry has faced a full-frontal assault by Republican leaders and shadowy surrogate groups, such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry, a triple Purple Heart winner, has been left desperately fighting allegations that he betrayed fellow veterans by turning against the war.</a><p> <b>In addition to what has been reported in late August concerning McCain's motivation for immediately defending kerry against the Swift Boat Vet attacks on his military record; that during the 2000 campaign, Karl Rove was the architect of a strategy of attacking McCain's strong reputation as a Viet Nam POW hero, vs. Bush's questionable military record of spotty service in a Texas Air National Guard "champagne unit", by publicizing information that questioned McCain's mental stability after a six year period of incarceration and periodic torture conducted by the North Vietnamese in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison for captured American pilots, there is this account, reported in 2000, as to the strategy used by the Bush campaign to destroy McCain as the leading primary candidate:</b><p> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/02/21/knuckles.html"><h2>Read my knuckles</h2> <IMG SRC="cover.gif" ALT="cover image" ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="107" HEIGHT="138" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="5"> <h3>To win big in South Carolina, Bush found his anger, battered McCain--and moved sharply to the right. Will moderates still buy his compassion pitch?</h3> <SPAN class="byline">By Eric Pooley</SPAN> <!-- date --> <p class="timestamp">February 21, 2000<br> Web posted at: 4:11 p.m. EST (2111 GMT)</p> <!-- /date --> <P> The crowd in Hilton Head last Wednesday morning wasn't much to brag about--roughly 250 people had shown up at a local marina to hear George W. Bush--but the candidate was pumped just the same. In the big debate the night before, he'd finally managed to get the better of John McCain. More important, Bush had unleashed the dogs of war against his rival--saturation TV and radio attacks, hundreds of thousands of telephone and direct-mail blasts, everything short of leaflets dropping from the skies above South Carolina. The dogs were tearing into McCain, raising questions about his character and dedication to the conservative cause. Bush told the crowd, in his new fire-in-the-belly style, "If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism, of polls and principles, come and join this campaign." His slip of the tongue about being tired of principles hinted at what happened in South Carolina: Bush believed he would be finished if he lost the state, so he did what it took to win. A country tune that played at the Hilton Head rally neatly summed up Bush's approach. Its refrain: "I'm really good at gettin' by." </P> <P> Want a reformer? Bush asked his party in South Carolina. I'll be your reformer--but a safer and more predictable one than McCain. Want a fighter who can take it to Al Gore? I can play rough--look what I did to my Republican rival. I can court the radical right and come out shining brightly. I'm really good at gettin' by. </P> <P> So good, in fact, that Bush did more than get by in South Carolina. He trounced McCain by 11 points overall, beating him handily among nearly all age groups, both genders and most income levels--among everyone, in fact, except veterans and new G.O.P-primary voters. South Carolina Republicans rejected McCain's message that "this party has lost its way," voting for Bush almost 3 to 1. The independents and Democrats who made up about 40% of the electorate went to McCain 2 to 1, but there weren't enough of them to keep things close. Exit polls show that a majority of voters saw Bush as the "real reformer"--an astonishing coup for the Texas Governor, who adopted McCain's mantle of reform just two weeks ago. Of those who believed McCain was the true reformer, more than a third voted for Bush anyway. For all its demographic changes in recent years, South Carolina remains wary of mavericks and loyal to the G.O.P establishment. It was the third consecutive time a Republican front runner had lost New Hampshire and regained his balance in South Carolina. The fire wall held. </P> <P> Bush's slashing tactics--ferocious even by South Carolina's down-and-dirty standards--don't fully account for the size of his victory. Bush managed to drive McCain's negative ratings from 5 to 30 in a month, but he also benefited from his own more serious and improvisatory style. Gone were the photo ops of Bush bowling and snowmobiling, replaced by substantive town-hall forums that looked a lot like McCain's. What helped Bush most of all was his hard charge to the right on social issues: he boosted conservative Christian turnout to record levels and collected two-thirds of their votes. But the things he said and did to win them could cost him down the road. </P> <P> The compassionate, big-tent Republicanism on which Bush campaigned for months became threatening to him when the tent started filling up with pro-McCain independents. So he called on the right wing of his party to guard the doors of the tent, warning that Democrats were conspiring to hijack the primary. The man who prides himself on being "a uniter, not a divider" won by pitting social conservatives against moderates. He kicked off his South Carolina assault at Bob Jones University, a place where interracial dating is officially prohibited. He all but told listeners on Christian radio that openly gay people would not find spots in his administration. He said he wasn't going to "tear down" his opponent, but his campaign literature told voters that "McCain says one thing but does another," and it distorted many of McCain's positions--charging, for example, that McCain wants to remove the pro-life plank from the G.O.P platform. That isn't true, and among religious conservatives, it was a napalm blast at McCain. </P> <P> Those tactics helped Bush win South Carolina, but they could alienate the voters he needs in the fall if he secures the nomination. McCain hammered that message home in his unforgiving concession speech, saying Bush's tactics would give the country "Speaker Gephardt and President Gore." McCain was warning that in the eyes of many Americans, Bush has become the candidate of Bob Jones, the Confederacy, the National Rifle Association and the National Right to Life Committee. And though Bush proved in South Carolina that he can change his spots as nimbly as Bill Clinton does, he must now show that he can change them back--something that is a good deal harder to do. </P> <P> Three weeks ago, when McCain began comparing himself to a Star Wars hero--"I'm Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death Star"--the analogy seemed overblown. But by primary day in South Carolina, it seemed more than apt. </P> <P> Bush's Death Star strategy was hatched on Feb. 2, the day after he lost New Hampshire to McCain by 18 points. His top advisers met in a panic at a hotel in Greenville, S.C. Not only was Bush's air of inevitability shattered--McCain was galloping from 40 points behind in South Carolina to a dead heat--but all their presumptions about the race had proved wrong. They had spent months trying to plug the stature gap and build an image of Bush as a candidate who could unite the party--and then they were blindsided by a Republican at war with its leaders. At that meeting, Bush's team realized he had to forget his promises to run a "hopeful and optimistic and very positive" campaign--promises that had been easy to make last fall, when he seemed to be waltzing unopposed to the nomination. Bush agreed to do whatever it would take to win. And in South Carolina, "whatever it takes" has a colorful lineage. </P> <P> The architect of whatever-it-takes politics, the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, helped turn South Carolina, his home state, into the most reliably Republican place in the country. He did so on behalf of George Bush's father in 1988 by exploiting the fears of conservative whites and honing the tactics of search-and-destroy politics--black arts he apologized for in 1991 as he was dying of a brain tumor. Bush's South Carolina team, led by former Governor Carroll Campbell and his onetime chief of staff Warren Tompkins, are masters of Atwater-style politics. Bush and his chief strategist, Karl Rove, were both close to Atwater over the years. Atwater's spirit was hovering over the meeting when Bush's advisers decided it was time to "drive up McCain's negatives." Though Bush had always prided himself on being a positive candidate--even in 1994 when Governor Ann Richards of Texas was calling him "Shrub" and goading him to fight--this time he let his team go to work. "We play it different down here," one of Bush's top South Carolina advisers told Time last week. "We're not dainty, if you get my drift. We're used to playin' rough." </P> <P> Bush's team devised a two-pronged strategy aimed at shoring up his image and conservative credentials while carpet-bombing McCain with attacks that portrayed the Arizonan as a hypocrite and a closet liberal. The first part of the plan would be carried out by Bush himself, who had a "wimp factor" to contend with. To allay post-New Hampshire doubts that he wasn't tough enough to go the distance, the Governor attacked McCain in a series of press conferences beginning just days after New Hampshire. Bush started out by calling McCain a Republican who took "Democrat" positions favored by "Bill Clinton and Al Gore" on issues from tax cuts to campaign-finance reform. He stepped up the assault during the next week, holding bash-of-the-day press conferences for four straight days. His barrage against McCain was always the first order of business. He began one press conference by saying, "I want to continue this discussion about saying one thing and doing another." </P> <P> Each of Bush's points was meant to show McCain as a hypocrite: on public financing of campaigns; on allowing incumbents to "roll over" their campaign war chests (and never mind that Bush had done the same thing); on whether he favored tax hikes in the past. On each occasion, Bush aides would pass out, fax and e-mail memos documenting McCain's alleged hypocrisies. And surrogates--Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Strom Thurmond, Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler, Attorney General Charlie Condon and former Governors Campbell and David Beasley--were dispatched to deliver the message in harsher terms on TV and radio. Outside groups--the National Right to Life Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, the National Smokers Alliance--were counted upon to hammer McCain with incendiary radio and TV spots of their own. </P> <P> The strategy carried risks--notably that Bush would start to seem not just tough but Visigothic. That problem was solved when McCain made his one colossal blunder of the campaign--a move Bush aides call "a gift." </P> <P> The gift was a TV commercial in which the Arizona Senator looked into the camera and charged that Bush "twists the truth like Clinton." The spot went too far--in South Carolina's Republican circles, being compared to Clinton is worse than being compared to Satan himself. Putting it on the air undermined McCain's claim that he was above politics as usual and freed Bush to amplify his attack strategies while muddying the waters on the question of which candidate was hitting below the belt. Says a Bush aide: "When he truly crossed the line, that's when we could go after him. It was a huge opportunity." </P> <P> For the rest of the campaign, Bush used the ad as a smoke screen to obscure his assaults on McCain. His team quickly cut an effective response ad, with a nice kicker: "Disagree with me, fine," it said, "but do not challenge my integrity." It was his best performance yet, and Bush used variations on the theme in the final debate and in his press conferences. For instance, when reporters challenged him on his failure to speak out against the racist policies of Bob Jones University, he jutted his jaw and said, "Don't you judge my heart." The Bush camp kept the spot on the air through primary day--long after McCain had taken his attack ad off the air--because it implied that McCain was still playing dirty even after he had committed himself to sending only positive messages. </P> <P> Behind the smoke screen, Bush's allies on the right stepped up their assault. The National Smokers Alliance warned that "if straight talk is the issue, John McCain isn't the answer." Christian-right leader Pat Robertson threatened that "a large portion of the Republican base would walk away" if McCain was the nominee. Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House impeachment proceedings, taped a phone message for 100,000 voters, implicitly criticizing McCain for wanting to change the G.O.P's abortion plank to include exceptions for rape and incest--exceptions Bush also supports, though Hyde didn't mention that. The National Right to Life Committee issued a mass mailing warning that McCain "voted repeatedly to use tax dollars for experiments that use body parts from aborted babies." On the front of the leaflet was a photograph of a baby with the words, "This little guy wants you to vote for George W. Bush." </P> <P> Phone calls from Bush polling operations appear to have been attacks masquerading as opinion surveys--so-called push polls. These calls distorted McCain's record--exaggerating his role in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, for example--in an attempt to push voters away from him. Though the Bush campaign claims only 300 of the calls were made in South Carolina, Bush's Michigan pollster, Fred Steeper, told Time last week that his firm had placed several thousand such calls in his state. Steeper says he has stopped making the calls. </P> <P> Former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, a Bush strategist, used his firm to smother the 400,000 self-described Christian conservatives in the state with negative phone calls and mailings about McCain. ("He claims he's conservative, but he's pushed for higher taxes and waffled on protecting innocent human life.") In this blitz of mail and phone calling, Bush was portrayed as far more socially conservative than he describes himself at rallies. Asked why Bush almost never brought up his pro-life position in his appearances before South Carolina voters, a top Bush adviser said, "This is a message that needs to be narrowcasted." In other words, they didn't want moderates up North hearing what they were saying to conservatives down South. </P> <P> To see how Bush's words went further to the right as he narrowcast them, consider the way he worked the issue of gay rights. In the debate last Tuesday, Bush said he had refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, the G.O.P's largest gay organization, because "they had made a commitment to John McCain." When McCain said the group had not endorsed him, Bush replied, "It doesn't matter." To conservatives, though, it mattered a great deal. A few days later, a Baptist church in Kentucky began faxing a flyer to South Carolina radio stations, railing against "John McCain's fag army." (Both McCain and Bush support the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military.) The Bush campaign said it had nothing to do with the flyer. But the Governor repeated his anti-gay message during an on-air interview with a Christian radio station in Charleston, implying that he wouldn't appoint openly gay people to spots in his administration. "An openly known homosexual is somebody who probably wouldn't share my philosophy," he said. </P> <P> The most corrosive material of all came from groups and individuals independent of Bush's campaign. A Bob Jones professor named Richard Hand sent out an e-mail falsely alleging that McCain had sired two children out of wedlock. A flyer distributed at McCain rallies went after Cindy McCain for her addiction to pain killers a decade ago and her admission that she stole them from a clinic where she worked. Phone-call campaigns targeted McCain's broken first marriage. And a pro-Confederate flag group called Keep It Flying, founded just last week, sent out 250,000 pieces of misleading mail about the candidate's position on the flag flying above the state capitol. Both McCain and Bush ducked the issue, but the flyer said, "Of the major candidates, only George Bush has refused to call the Confederate flag a racist symbol." In a bit of payback last Saturday, McCain's camp decided to send copies of the flyer to African-Americans throughout Michigan. "We'll see if Bush can run as a Dixiecrat in Michigan and everywhere else," says McCain political director John Weaver. </P> <P> Against this deluge, McCain fought back with a positive TV ad comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. But McCain's morning-in-America spot was airing once for every six Bush commercials. McCain got some help from Gary Bauer, the Christian conservative candidate who folded his campaign after New Hampshire and endorsed McCain last week. Bauer is fighting Reed for supremacy among Christian conservatives, but last week he lost the battle. He wasn't popular enough to sway many votes. McCain's network of veterans tried to counter Bush's carpet bombing with a grass-roots ground campaign, but by Saturday morning, McCain knew in his bones that it was over. </P> <P> In the hallway outside his hotel room that morning, McCain turned to his closest aide, Mark Salter. "We're going to lose this, aren't we?" McCain asked. Salter didn't have to answer. Inside the room, people started eating cold pizza from the night before, shaking their heads over reports that the state G.O.P had failed to open 21 polling places in black areas of Greenville. Later the team sat down and went over the exit polling. The candidate wanted to know about the attacks, so his ally, South Carolina Representative Lindsey Graham, ran through the list of the body blows McCain had absorbed. Cindy McCain broke into tears. "It's all right, Cindy," said McCain. "We can take it." By the time he had digested the results, McCain was smiling broadly--the mirror image of primary night in New Hampshire, when he had won so big yet couldn't manage a smile. </P> <P> McCain still sees the battle that raged in South Carolina--and that this week spreads to Michigan and beyond--as a chance for an epochal party realignment, a ritual of G.O.P purification. But his party may not be ready for the purity he has in mind. As Bush and his aides see it, the party feud caused by McCain's surge is merely a minor, passing unpleasantness, not a long-term problem. And they believe the damage Bush did to his own image in South Carolina can be easily fixed. Says a senior Bush adviser: "We'll patch things up pretty quickly." </P> <P> Not if McCain can help it. Despite the stinging loss, he went roaring out of South Carolina vowing that "our crusade grows stronger" and pitting "my optimistic and welcoming conservatism" against Bush's "negative message of fear." He added, "I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way." Bush, stripped now of all his laid-back affectation, wants it any way he can get it. He's very good at gettin' by. </P> <h5>--Reported by James Carney with Bush, John F. Dickerson with McCain and Maggie Sieger/Detroit </h5></a><p> <b>Do you Bush apologists really know who you cheerlead for ? The president only makes public appearances at presumably supportive military installations and at rallies where all attendees indergo background checks and are pre-screened for loyalty and to submit questions in advance that they will ask Bush. As of April, 2004, Bush gave only 1/7 the number of press conferences that his father held in the same number of months in office. Even at the eleven press conferences which Bush held, some were limited to pre-submitted reporters' questions.....no spontaneity, no surprises, just carefully scripted performances.....a president packaged for the media, designed, IMO, to make up for severe deficiencies in ability, to deceive the people.</b><p> Jefferson said: <i> "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them." </i> <b> Is Bush facing the people "to set them right as to facts" ? I think not:</b><p> <a href="http://www.theweekbehind.com/articles/liars.html"> (As of April 2, 2004.....) The net-net of Bush's first three years in office is one of the most closed off -- but "on message" -- administrations in history. So far, Bush has held only 11 press conferences -- compared with 77 by his father in the first three years of his administation, according to Frank Rich in The New York Times. Even Richard Nixon, deemed one of the most secretive presidents of our time, held 23 over the same period.</a><p> <b>As for your buying the oft repeated Rove designed strategy (if something is repeated often enough, the sheeple will believe it) to smear Kerry as the "flip-flopper":</b><p> <FONT FACE="VERDANA" SIZE=2> Bush was against campaign finance reform; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against a Homeland Security Department; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against a 9/11 commission; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against an Iraq WMD investigation; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against nation building; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against deficits; now he's for them. <BR><BR> Bush was for free trade; then he was for tariffs on steel, and now he's against them again. <BR><BR> Bush was against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; now he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State. <BR><BR> Bush was for states' rights to decide on gay marriage; now he is for changing the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage. <BR><BR> Bush said he would provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency); then he doesn't. <BR><BR> Bush said that "help is on the way" to the military; then he cuts their benefits and health care. <BR><BR> Bush claimed to be in favor of environmental protection; then he secretly approved oil drilling on Padre Island in Texas and other places and took many more anti-environmental actions. <BR><BR> Bush said he is the "education president;" then he refused to fully fund key education programs and rarely does his homework, such as read position papers so he will be more knowledgeable on issues. <BR><BR> Bush said that him being governor of Texas for six years was enough political experience to be president of the U.S.; then he criticized Sen. John Edwards for not having enough experience after Edwards had served six years in the U.S. Senate. <BR><BR> During the 2000 campaign, Bush said there were too many lawsuits being filed; then during the Florida recount, he was the first to file a lawsuit to stop the legal counting of votes after Gore took advantage of Florida law to ask for a recount. <BR><BR> On Nov. 7, 2000, the Bush campaign supported Florida county officials drawing up new copies of some 10,000 spoiled absentee votes in 26 Republican-leaning counties that the machines did not read and marking them for the candidates when they showed "clear intent;" they opposed doing the same thing after Nov. 7 when Gore asked for such recounts. Bush dominated absentee balloting in Florida by a two-to-one margin. <BR><BR> Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he did not have a "litmus test" for judges he appointed to be against abortion; then he mostly appointed judges who were against abortion. <BR><BR> In the early 1990s, Bush led a campaign to raise taxes in Arlington, Texas, to build a new baseball stadium for the team he partly owned; he later criticized politicians for supporting tax increases – after he got rich by selling the team with the new stadium to a wealthy campaign contributor. <BR><BR> Bush opposed the U.S. negotiating with North Korea; now he supports it. <BR><BR> Bush went to the racist and segregationist Bob Jones University in South Carolina; then he said he shouldn't have. <BR><BR> Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq; later Bush announced he would not call for a vote. <BR><BR> Bush first said the "mission accomplished" Iraqi banner was put up by the sailors; he later admitted it was done by his advance team. <BR><BR> Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the U.S.; after meeting with Mexican President Fox, he decided against it. <BR><BR> Bush was opposed to Rice testifying in front of the 9/11 commission citing "separation of powers;" then he was for it. <BR><BR> Bush was against Ba'ath party members holding office or government jobs in Iraq; now he's for it. <BR><BR> Bush said we must not appease terrorists; then he lifted trade sanctions on admitted terrorist Mohammar Quaddafi and Pakistan, which pardoned its official who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. <BR><BR> Bush said he would wait until after the Nov. election to ask for more money for the war effort; then he decided he needed it before the election, after all. <BR><BR> Bush said, "Leaving Iraq prematurely would only embolden the terrorists and increase the danger to America." His administration now says that U.S. troops will pull out of Iraq when the new provisional authority asks. Then he said they'll stay "as long as needed" again. Now he's saying that the Iraqis can ask the troops to leave, and they will. Or is he? <BR><BR> The Bush administration officials said that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to "enemy combatants." Now they claims they do. <BR><BR> Bush officials said before the Iraq invasion that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to U.S. security and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and even nuclear weapons; after the invasion, they denied saying the word "imminent" and saying that Iraq had WMDs and nuclear weapons, even though they were caught on tape making such statements. <BR><BR> "The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - George W. Bush, Sept. 13, 2001 <BR><BR> "I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - George W. Bush, March 13, 2002 <BR> </td> </tr> <a href="http://www.rushlimbaughonline.com/articles/bushflipflopper.htm">http://www.rushlimbaughonline.com/articles/bushflipflopper.htm</a> Last edited by host; 09-06-2004 at 12:37 PM..