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Criticizing the Republican convention as bitter and insulting one moment, then calling Mr. Bush dishonest the next, Mr. Kerry attacked against what he called his rivals' distortions and said the president's address Thursday made clear he "will literally say anything and do anything in order to try to get re-elected" - a line stolen from Mr. Bush, who used it regularly against Al Gore.
"Yesterday, I read that speech," Mr. Kerry told a crowd of thousands here in a heavily Republican county outside Columbus that Mr. Bush won by 22 percentage points in 2000. "Every time they open their mouths, they can't tell the truth about the things that we want to do. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's time for us to have a president of the United States who can look you in the eye and when he does, you know you're being told the truth about your lives and about this country."
But it was on the economy that Mr. Kerry focused on here in Newark, a rural town of 46,000 where 4,300 people are unemployed and another local factory is set to lay off 784 workers next Thursday.
"All these attacks on me, I've been through worse, believe me - that's not what this is about," he said. "It's their attacks on you, that's what this is all about."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/politics/campaign/04k...
Or, as the local paper, the Columbus Dispatch (which more of the swing state's residents read than the New York Times), told it:
Fired-up Kerry Keeps Up His Counterattack
NEWARK, Ohio — The gloves are off. After being pulverized all week from Republicans at their national convention in New York, Sen. John Kerry yesterday tore into President Bush, ripping his policies, his convention performance and attacks on the Democrat's credibility.
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