Month: July 2004

The latest AP/Ipsos poll shows the President increasing his lead over Kerry to 4 percent, as voters are unimpressed with Edwards:

The three-day survey began Monday, the day before Kerry tapped Edwards as his running mate, and asked registered voters about the newly minted ticket on Tuesday and Wednesday. Half supported the Republican tandem of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (news – web sites) while 46 percent backed the Kerry-Edwards ticket, just within that question’s margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Voters said they were feeling better about the economy and no worse about Iraq (news – web sites), a sign that Bush may be regaining his political footing just as Democrats make a high-profile push toward their nominating convention in late July.

“I want Bush in there, because the other guy is like sending a boy to do a man’s job,” said Glenn Foldessy, 45, of Streetsboro, Ohio, outside Cleveland. Foldessy, who usually votes Republican, said Edwards made the Democratic ticket stronger, but not strong enough.

So much for bounce, eh?

Link John Marfoe

Everybody who’s seen or read about Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary knows that the Bush family is connected to the bin Ladens through the shadowy Carlyle Group, but how many know about this connection:

Liberal activist George Soros has a stake in the Carlyle Group–the organization Moore uses to make the Bush-Bin Laden link–that dwarves that of the Bush family.

Moveon.org is practically a wholly-owned activity of Soros, its biggest supporter, so here we see how the bin Ladens intend to run Bush from office, the better to carry out their nefarious plots against America.

Why doesn’t the left want you to know this?

John Kerry explained the advantage he and Edwards have over the incumbent to an admiring crowd today:

…we’ve got better hair.

I’m glad he cleared that up, because when Kerry said Edwards didn’t have enough experience to be president — just a few weeks ago — I thought he meant it. But as we can now see, it was just Kerry being Kerry.

Does a freshman senator with no prior experience have what it takes to step into the Oval Office and run the Free World in the event that the president takes sick, gets shot, or has a better offer from a richer country?

In general, I think the answer is probably no, and largely because of the nature of legislative experience. We typically choose governors to serve as chief executive, because their experience is so much more relevant than that of legislators, especially back-bench legislators from the minority party whose chief role is toeing the party line and doing what their committee chairs tell them to do.

The joke about Edwards is that Kerry wanted someone with more experience, but Dan Quayle turned him down.

Peaceniks held a demonstration in San Diego to protest the handover of sovereignty in Iraq, only to be outnumbered by counter-protestors. Go read Citizen Smash, the instigator. This is great.

John Kerry’s selection of trial lawyer John Edwards as running mate strikes me as a desperate move that violates the first rule of veep-selection: don’t choose a veep who’s more charismatic than the candidate. Kerry being what he is, it was probably necessary to violate this rule in order to have a breathing veep, so never mind.

The selection of Edwards appeals to moderates, but it alienates two important interest groups: business leaders, who don’t want a trial lawyer in the White House and are willing to mobilize against the Kerry/Edwards ticket; and disaffected youth, the Deaniacs, who want someone more in line with their values, such as they are.

I’ve always admired Edwards’ hair, and I have to admit that he brings youth and vitality to an otherwise lackluster ticket. But voters may not be looking for anything more than a good nap this year, so it’s not clear that Edwards brings value to the ticket.

UPDATE: Here’s a typical reaction from a Deaniac (see more here):

I’m sick about it. Once again the Kerry campaign is made to order for the ill informed, for pomp and no circumstance, for the pundits and not the people, for the camera and not my kids. Edwards, smerdards, yes to Iraq, yes to Patriot Act. No to experience, no to any real heart, as far as I can see. Today is another very sad for me. Not this time, but soon I know I will be forced to leave the Democrats altogether. I’m sick about this choice.

Sounds like trouble in River City.

Boregonian columnist David Reihnhard wrote a nice summary of the shifting goalposts technique used by opponents of the The great liberation of Iraq:

In the beginning, President Bush said he would go to war if Saddam Hussein did not comply with U.N. resolutions, and they said the president needed authority from Congress in order to take military action against Saddam.

And when President Bush went to Congress and Congress overwhelmingly passed the Iraq War resolution, they said President Bush needed to go to the United Nations and seek the United Nations’ agreement.

And when the United Nations passed a one-last-chance resolution threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors, they said that when we said the United Nations must agree we didn’t just mean all the resolutions the United Nations passed or even the latest one, we meant troops and money and moral support.

And when other U.N. members joined President Bush’s “coalition of the willing” and provided troops and money and moral support, they said the troops and money and moral support that they meant were troops and money and moral support from . . . France.

And the war came.

Reminders like this – and the one by Michael Ignatieff – are essential as we enter an election season in which the left will try to pummel President Bush by rewriting history.