Richard Bennett

The President must have won the debate in the eyes of the people, as he’s widened his lead according to the daily tracking poll from Zogby International:

A day after the final debate, President Bush has opened a four-point lead over Democratic rival Senator John Kerry, according to a new Reuters/Zogby daily tracking poll. The telephone poll of 1220 likely voters was conducted from Tuesday through Thursday (October 12-14, 2004)…

Pollster John Zogby: ?While Bush– now at 48%– had another good night continuing his upward trend, Kerry appears stuck at 44%. The good news for the President is that he has improved his performance among the small group of undecideds. Nearly a quarter now say that he deserves to be re-elected?up from 18% in our last poll.

Rasmussen has similar results: 3.5% lead for the President, Kerry slowly losing ground.

UPDATE: TIPP has similar results, 47-44 for Bush, and the Washington Post has an outlier poll showing a 48-48 deadlock with no post-debate movement. This isn’t cherry-picking, folks, this is the whole spectrum of tracking polls.

The centerpiece of the Kerry election strategy appears to be voter fraud.

Plus George Soros’ money and media bias. Nov. 2nd is going to be dicier than the polls indicate, as these bastards will stop at nothing to take away our freedom.

Bush Job Approval:

Thursday October 14, 2004 — Fifty-three percent (53%) of American voters say they approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove.

The President’s Job Approval has not dipped below 51% since the Republican National Convention. Since Labor Day, it has moved in a narrower range from 51% to 54%.

During all of 2004, it has ranged from a high of 57% in early January to a low of 48% on May 17.

Today’s job approval rating is higher than yesterday’s, owing to a positive response to the President’s debate performance.

Here’s an endorsement from prominent foreign leader Koizumi of Japan:

Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 21:37 JST
TOKYO ? Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Thursday he wants George W Bush to retain the U.S. presidency in the country’s upcoming election.

“I don’t want to interfere with another country’s election but since I’m well-acquainted with President Bush, I want him to carry on,” Koizumi told reporters at his office when asked about Democratic rival Sen John Kerry’s [alleged] lead in [some flakey] poll.

Koizumi is a stand-up guy.

Rasmussen’s nightly tracking poll shows the President gaining from the third debate:

Thursday October 14, 2004–The debates are over and there’s less than three weeks until Election Day. The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows President George W. Bush with 48% of the vote and Senator John Kerry with 46%.

The Tracking Poll is based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. All but a few of the interviews for today’s report were conducted prior to the completion of last night’s debate.

Prior to the debate, our latest rating’s for the President’s handling of the economy and the situation in Iraq provided further evidence of an evenly divided electorate. In both cases, the number who say the President is doing a good or an excellent job is roughly equal to the number saying he is doing a poor job.

Our latest Electoral College projections show the President ahead with 240 Electoral Votes to 194 for Senator Kerry.

Kerry’s high point was the first debate, and it will be all downhill for him to Nov. 2nd.

In a way, it makes me sad that Kerry’s going to lose because it means that Hillary will have the inside track in 2008. If we can get Giuliani and Schwarzenegger on the ticket, we can take her but that means changing the Constitution.

QandO Blog has an excellent translation of the debate into English.

Dr. Frank discovers a novel campaign by scruffy foreigners to influence our elections: “Dear Sir or Madam: I demand that you withhold your support from the rabidly Zionist neocon imperialist war criminals at once…”.

Check out the sample letters, they’re hilarious in a tin-foil hat, unintention irony sort of a way.

Kerry’s gratuituous reference to the gay Cheney made me cringe. I don’t’ like the guy anyway, but I thought he was raised better than that. It didn’t go over too well with undecided voters either:

Forget his health care plan. Forget abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Forget even how many times he did or did not vote to raise taxes. Senator John Kerry may have lost three critical votes with a simple aside, when he invoked Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter as part of an answer on same-sex marriage.

“That is very unfair,” blurted Patsey Farrell, 64, one of a handful of undecided voters gathered here to watch the final presidential debate Wednesday night. “I’m sorry, that’s too personal. That’s too hurtful.”

Her son-in-law, Kevin Uhde, the 50-year-old elementary school principal who held this pizza party, agreed. “Not by name,” he said, shaking his head at Mr. Kerry on the 24-inch Phillips television set a few yards away. “Why single out one person?”

And Mr. Uhde’s wife, Karlen, added, “I think it’s like a low blow.”

Not only does the man have no core beliefs, he has no manners either. The children of politicians are people, not campaign issues.

Kerry’s a punk.

UPDATE: Liberal Commie “Nation” writer Marc Cooper was creeped out by the gay daughter thing, which he calls Kerry’s worst moment in the debate:

His sucker punch mention of Dick Cheney?s lesbian daughter. Please. Edwards did the same the other night. This is an obvious ploy to drive a wedge between Bush-Cheney and their most reactionary homophobic base. It stinks to high heaven

Yup.

The Iraqi Resistance is made up of some pretty stupid people. Any Iraqi who’s genuinely upset with the American Occupation can help to bring it to a swift conclusion by helping to restore order in the troubled parts of the Sunni Triangle and organizing around his chosen candidates in the January election. Every car bombing, sniper attack or kidnapping just strengthens the occupation and pushes the elections further away.

Some of them have finally started to get the message and help the Coalition take out the foreign terrorists who’re responsible for the atrocities:

U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

“He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near,” Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.

One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi’s group. Suri’s body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.

This is, of course, bad news for the Democrats who want to turn the War on Terror into a tea party.

How Bush Won Round 2:

When the questioning turned to taxes, Kerry pandered with a liberal’s absurd promise not to sign legislation raising taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 a year, neglecting only to say,”Read my lips.”

Kerry also blundered with a weird attack on an $84 item in the Bushes’ federal income tax return, supposedly from a timber business. “I own a timber company? That’s news to me,” said Bush, adding engagingly in what was the most natural moment in the debate, “Need some wood?” It turns out that Kerry relied on an Annenberg Web site that later admitted it had been confused, which left the Democratic candidate out on a hardwood limb. Bush was too much the gentleman to point out, now that their income taxes were in dispute, that Mrs. Heinz Kerry paid only 11 percent in 2003 on her $5 million income, while the Bushes paid 28 percent.

(Although every Bush slip gets delighted examination – he called Kerry “Kennedy” and he said, “Internets”; can you imagine? – Kerry’s minor gaffes attract little notice. When citing his overseas travel in the first debate, Kerry talked of visiting the old K.G.B. headquarters “in Treblinka square.” He meant Lubyanka Square; Treblinka was the Nazi death camp. We all make mistakes.) …

In an anguishing moment, Kerry said he was against partial-birth abortion (as are most voters, including many pro-choice) and then explained why he voted against the ban that is now law. Countered Bush: “He was given a chance to vote and he voted no. . . . It’s clear for everybody to see. And as I said, you can run, but you can’t hide.”

Like, totally.