appealing to conservatives against bu**sh**

[bain_sidhe]

True story about a conservative against bu**sh** - an email sent to me from a conservative friend (in Missouri!) who's voting for Kerry. (As background, he brought up Haiti in a previous email and wanted to know what, if anything the U.S. is currently doing, and whether Kerry would offer to do more. I pointed him to the Sun-Sentinel article (
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-
edithaitiaidsep23,0,6449456.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial ) about the US's miserly response to date, but I haven't seen anything from Kerry about sending help to Haiti):

In a related development, I called the Kerry HQ in DC and spoke to a 2nd level volunteer ("Phil") about Bush's Alawi Attacks "The head of state of an allied nation comes to the US and Mr. Kerry shows no respect for him at all, and attacks him." (calls him a liar.) I pointed them (Woof!) to a NYT article that said that disease was running rampant - Hepatitis A & E (rare!) and Typhoid - because of the lack of clean water and decent sewage disposal. So Alawi IS a liar when he says "Everything's just PEACHY! Thanks for being there for us."

I also brought up the paucity of the donations to our Southern neighbors in their extremities. Where's the Compassion he talked about? With record deficits I don't see any conservatism, now he's being cheap with helping our neighbors, so there's no compassion either? Looks to me like George Bush is all hot air! Looks to me like
George Bush is great at making promises and labeling himself, but really really BAD at keeping promises and living up to his own labels. (Like that)

I also told them that I am a Conservative Republican Vietnam Veteran - who although I am opposed to Bush, have yet to see any positive reasons I should vote for Kerry. At present, my vote will be AGAINST Bush rather than FOR Kerry - an important distinction.

I'm in the middle of writing a reply to this, in which I'll point out that one, the media isn't really doing a good job covering Kerry's actual positions, but two, I also think Kerry is being cautious about reaching out too strongly to conservatives. But this got me thinking... how much *should* Kerry reach out to conservatives to give them a reason to vote FOR him, rather than against bu**sh**? It seems to me that any real effort to appeal to conservatives would turn off most of the left-of-center crowd. After all, come Nov. 2, Kerry election will depend far more on the left-of-center vote than the "conservatives opposed to bu**sh**" vote. Even though every conservative vote is a two-fer without the left vote, he *still* wouldn't win without the left. So, I think his basic strategy in terms of conservatives is (and, in my view, should be) to present himself as a "not unacceptable" (or perhaps more accurately "not dangerously liberal") candidate that they can vote for to get rid of bu**sh**. Kind of a "conservative stop-loss" policy.

What do you all think?

[sadiesworld]

1. I think Kerry can do plenty to reach out to conservatives w/o

alienating liberals.

-Many true conservatives hate this costly, messy war. Paleo-cons are largely isolationists.

-The deficits/debt.

-The Medicare bill which is hugely expensive and (primarily) a give-away to the insurance and drug companies.

-Outsourcing and trade.

-The Patriot Act. Kerry needs to tread lightly here though, IMO.