John Harris repeats the GOP spin on Kerry. Need links.

[CBHagman]

A front-page story, labeled as "analysis," in today's Washington Post examines the claim that John Kerry is a flip-flopper on policy issues and whether George W. Bush might not be more really deserving of the flip-flopper moniker. The issue of media complicity is brought up, as in...

"As Democrats see it, the flip-flopper allegation is this year's equivalent of how the GOP four years ago portrayed Al Gore as a chronic truth-stretcher, and now, as then, blame the news media for accepting and promoting a caricature."

Then Harris pulls out this little bit of RNC blast fax regurgitation:

"Iraq, however, has been the source of the most damaging charges of equivocation and wind-shifting against Kerry. The Massachusetts senator voted for the Iraq war in October 2002, but a year later voted against Bush's request for $87 billion for military and reconstruction spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter vote came when former Vermont governor Howard Dean's antiwar candidacy was ascendant. The vote may have been wise politics at the time, but came with a high price -- lending an aura of plausibility to the subsequent charges by Bush that Kerry is motivated by opportunism."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43093-2004Sep22_2.html

Can you believe it? Harris makes no mention of the fact that there were two separate bills (and votes) on the $87 million. Worse, he depicts the vote in terms of political expediency and trimming one's sails to the wind, as it were.

We know that George W. Bush used John McCain's vote on an appropriations bill to depict McCain as against funding for breast cancer research or treatment or some such thing, when the truth was that McCain objected to other portions of the bill and voted accordingly. We know Kerry had two different votes on the Iraq bill.

The trouble is that I could not find, in all my Google searches, an article explaining the differences between the two bills. Can you DUers help me there? We can't let Harris's repetition of GOP talking points go unanswered. I'm going to hit the ombudsman and the Post about this story and their docile acceptance of anything the RNC has to put out. Thanks in advance!

[rfranklin]

1. http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=155

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/03/17/kerry_blasts_bush_on_protecting_troops/

http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse/archives/002347.html

[CBHagman]

2. Thanks so much!

That's a good start.

[blm]

3. Bush said he'd veto the 87 billion if it was paid for by any of his taxcut

for the wealthiest 2%.

Framing it by the typical Republican standards, Bush was AGAINST the bill before he was FOR it. Bush chose to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest over body armor for the troops.