Democrats make pre-emptive strike before Bush's Panhandle tour

[Freddie Stubbs]

By BILL KACZOR, Associated Press
August 10, 2004

PENSACOLA — Democrats made a pre-emptive strike Monday on the eve of President Bush's planned campaign swing through heavily Republican areas of the Florida Panhandle, which is brimming with military bases and is home to thousands of veterans.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., drew a parallel between an independent group's advertisements attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record and efforts to tarnish Sen. John McCain during his 2000 race against Bush for the Republican nomination.

McCain will join Bush on a bus tour Tuesday that will take the president and the Arizona senator, a former prisoner of war, to Pensacola, Niceville and Panama City.

"In 2000, the bunch that's currently running the White House called John McCain, a man who spent 51/2 years as a POW in Vietnam, unpatriotic," said Graham.

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