Wild Eyes
Kerry either is stuck in Dukakis – mode with his response to the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” — Dukakis – lite in the sense that he is responding, at least, or he’s carefully gotten his ducks in a row to utterly nail Bush Administration — the lawsuit coming that Bush coordinated his attacks with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
We’re about to find out. If the former is the case, he’s lost a chunk of the vote — his vote amongst veterans now sagging a bit, and it will be said that he did not heed the lessons from the comparison between Dukakis losing campaign of 1988 strategy and the Clinton winning campaign strategy of 1992. Joshua Micah Marshal is probably correct. The Bush assault has little to do with Kerry’s wounds, but with a weird post-modernist conception of signifiers.
Notice the harbinger of the carefully constructed innuendo that Kerry threw a grenade at himself, saying essentially that Kerry’s not used to this heat, the heat that we’re throwing at him. It’s all a test of machismo.
If the latter is the case, the voters who have swung toward Bush — or rather against Kerry — because of this matter will now swing back to Kerry with avengance.
But, even if the latter is the case, I’d guess that a little Carvillian “War Room” real-time lines of attack would innoculate even the short-term damage.
And Karl Rove, because the only way to win the election is by turning it into a contest over the signifiers and the signified, will try to keep it looming in the background as we turn to the next questiont that Kerry left an opening toward by not even bothering to address at the DNC Convention: the meaning of his post – Vietnam War protesting. Note that the new Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad’s message: “Kerry accused the Vietnam Soldiers of Committing War – Crimes, and let them down”.
In the meantime, the RNC’s line of attacks are as follows:
(1) Even though we deny that we have anything to do with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, we do have something to do with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and you have as much invested in Moveon.org and the Media Fund, and Moveon.org is a shadowy organization and a disgrace, and we should do something about these 527s.
Where do you stand on 527s, Kerry? Huh? Huh? Huh?
See…
(2) Wow. Kerry attacked the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Check out his “wild eyes”.
The term “wild eyed” has become the new RNC talking-point watch-word.
It started with Howard Dean. It continued with the Internet ad of “The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed.”
This is a psychological game, any counter-attack against you is marginalized by its very nature of being a counter-attack, saying that they are desperate.
Odd, actually. Dejavu.
Marc Racicot used the term, and we can now expect every bozo on Fox News and talk radio to spread it around like butter.
You can throw it back to some of the thrusts from the “Swift Boat” allegations: was Kerry playing Rambo, shooting at innocent Vietnam innocents? (And, assuming he was, from the viewpoint of the “Swift Boat Veterans’ — hawks one and all — how do you reconcile that criticism with the oft-put suggestion that “there is no such thing as a politically correct war”? And then back into his post-war speeches that, yes, there were war crimes being committed…)
(3) Noticed this on Drudge: The Media’s expose on the Swifters — the recent NY Times story on Bush – Swift ties and the recent Washington Post story on one of the member’s inconsistencies and record-distortion? It’s the Liberal Media, you know, and … all lies.
In this case: I hate it when the Truth has a liberal bias.