Time on Bush's "Strategery"..."How Bush Plans To Win"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.time.com/time/election2004/article/0,18471,674761,00.html?cnn=yes



The balloons hadn't even settled in Boston's Fleet Center after John Kerry's acceptance speech when George W. Bush's campaign set about popping them. The President's top aides had been BlackBerrying little darts to one another all through the address, and now they were on a conference call, comparing notes across a virtual war room. Bush confidante Karen Hughes in Texas said Kerry had come across as "lecturing," pointing his finger like a schoolmaster. In his Washington living room, Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, said Kerry's position on Iraq was a "puzzlement," a contradiction of his own votes.

As eager as the Bush team may have been to point out Kerry's faults, they may have to be satisfied doing more of their dissing in private. According to the Bush playbook, the phone call marked the end of an era in the re-election campaign and what they hope is the beginning of a new one. In the spring and earlier this summer, most of the ads and energy of Bush's aides had been devoted to defining Kerry negatively. Those attacks will continue, Bush sources say, but they will take a backseat to a new, more positive message. "You have to pick your moments," says a senior Administration official. "You don't want to give a positive speech and then come out of the gate lashing out."

The President plans to spend much of the four weeks before his convention, starting Aug. 30, offering a new stump speech, a fresh set of upbeat advertisements and proposals to help people balance work and family, retrain after job loss, prepare for retirement and gain greater control over their financial fortune. The new agenda is aimed squarely at the minority of undecided voters who may determine the election. Swing voters don't look backward, contends Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief strategist. "They want to know what you are going to do with a next term." What's more, the risk for Bush in continuing to assail Kerry is that undecided voters might pay less attention to the substance of the attacks than the simple fact of them and resent the President for dividing a country that may be longing to heal and fight as one.

But Bush's biggest vulnerability is on the domestic front, where voters believe the Democratic ticket would do a better job on everything from health care (Kerry and running mate John Edwards lead Bush and Cheney by 16 percentage points) to the economy (8 percentage points) to understanding working-class needs (8 percentage points). With Kerry and Edwards aiming so much of their rhetorical fire at the middle-class squeeze, Bush will offer a counterattack that he hopes will prove "he understands the challenges that people face every day," in the words of Bartlett. One of Bush's signature lines in his new stump speech is "This world of ours is changing," and his new proposals are meant to show that his government could help families adapt.

[cthrumatrix]

1. in other words.... don't analyze what he's done...listen to more lies

[ClintonTyree]

2. "This world of ours is changing"..............

So the Repuglican's answer to that is, 'let's just revert back to the 19th Century, back when darkies, women and foreigners knew their place and robber barons ruled the world'.

What a geat vision for the future.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

5. He wants to show he understands by pushing back

1). "he understands the challenges that people face every day," in the words of Bartlett.

TRANSLATION: He doesn't understand, and he doesn't give a rat's ass. Most of the anti-Bush (or "Anyone But Bush") talking points of late have centered around "He and Cheney don't understand what the average working family goes through." The primary reason people are saying this is that THEY REALLY DON'T. Cheney has Halliburton dollars to keep him warm, Bush has kickbacks from his "base" and the BFEE family fortune. So he's hoping that if he says "I understand," Mr. and Ms. "Middle America" will swallow it without question.

2). "One of Bush's signature lines in his new stump speech is "This world of ours is changing," and his new proposals are meant to show that his government could help families adapt."

TRANSLATION: He's already "helping" by suggesting that people go to community colleges to train for jobs that they already know they don't want, at a pay rate they cannot survive on. The way that "his" government would help these people to "adapt" is to quote what MUST be one of Bush's favorite Scripture passages from the Bible: "If man shall not work, man shall not eat."

[kaitykaity]

3. Here comes "the compassionate conservative."

Everybody ready???

Geez, they are SO predictable.

[olddem43]

4. In three words - Lie, Cheat & Steal