The Kerry Factor
Most every political blogger has reported Kerry’s assinine original statement. They’ve also commented on Kerry’s defiant-sounding press conference today, where he tried blaming “the Republican smear machine” while ‘admitting’ that he’d botched a joke about the President. I haven’t seen many opinionists talking about something that I’ll name the ‘Kerry Factor’. Here’s what I mean:
As a political junkie, I remember watching Frank Luntz doing the focus groups on MSNBC during the Bush-Gore debates. What those focus groups taught me was that they didn’t like confrontation or negativity. Let’s transfer that to today’s version of those Luntz focus groups– independent voters.
I suspect that they won’t buy Kerry’s statement that he wasn’t talking about the military. Further, I suspect that they’ve already started abandoning Democrats. Don’t be surprised if Democrats experience an erosion with independant voters from now till election day.
The truth is that every candidate that had scheduled a Kerry visit will be asked if they thought Mr. Kerry should apologize. Another consequence to the Kerry Factor is that it allows for the dredging up of Kerry’s December, 2005 comments on Face the Nation:
Sen. KERRY: …And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs.
I suspect that people are viewing Kerry’s positions on the military as being similar to their candidate’s positions.
The other political consequence this will have is that this will guaranteedly rev the GOP base up more than the best GW speech ever could’ve.
Technorati Tags: Election 2006, John Kerry, Military
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
November 1st, 2006 at 2:39 am
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Military, Midterm Elections, President Bush, Anti-War Activists | [...]