Kerry Challenges GOP to Debate the Issues
Mary Dalrymple, The Associated Press, August 24, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27998-2004Aug24.html
BOSTON -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry picked New
York City, host to next week's Republican National Convention, to urge
the GOP to abandon negative attacks and debate solutions to problems
facing voters.
Kerry also was using the speech at New York's Cooper Union to contrast
his plans for raising middle-class living standards with goals
achieved in the last four years, just days before President Bush heads
to the city to lay out his agenda for the next four years.
"The world will listen to what the Republicans say when they come
here, but words, slogans and personal attacks cannot disguise what
they have done and left undone," Kerry said in remarks prepared for
delivery Tuesday. "I will be a champion for the middle class and those
struggling to join it. This administration has weakened our middle
class."
The Democratic ticket's plan for making middle-income voters more
prosperous would preserve middle-class tax cuts, reduce the cost of
health care, education and energy, and increase the federal minimum
wage.
The Democrats also promise to close the pay gap between men and women
and help families balance competing demands at home and at work.
Steve Schmidt, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said the Kerry
record displays support for tax hikes, not tax cuts.
"John Kerry says the blueprint for his economic agenda was his vote
for the biggest tax increase in American history he supported in
1993," Schmidt said.
The 1993 vote was in favor of President Clinton's plan to cut the
deficit by $469 billion over five years, including some tax increases.
It passed by one vote without any GOP support.
The call for a renewed focus on voters comes after days of exchanges
between Republicans and Democrats over five medals awarded Kerry
during the Vietnam War.
The Kerry campaign says Bush used a newly formed veterans' group not
subject to campaign spending limits to attack his character. Those
veterans say Kerry distorted his war experiences to win the medals,
but their accounts in a television ad have been disputed by Navy
records and veterans who served on Kerry's boat.
Bush on Monday criticized television spots run by all independent
political groups as "bad for the system." Asked specifically about the
anti-Kerry ad aired by the veterans' group, the president said, "That
means that ad, every other ad."
"The Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear
and smear because they can't talk about jobs, health care, energy
independence and rebuilding our alliances -- the real issues that
matter to the American people," Kerry said.
Schmidt said Kerry has stood by while similar independent groups
aligned with Democrats spend millions on ads against the president.
"John Kerry has been relentlessly negative," he said. "John Kerry has
refused to condemn those ads."
The charge and countercharge saw both sides produce veterans whose
accounts of the incidents that led to Kerry's war commendations.
Officials with the Kerry campaign, who count his war service as one of
his biggest assets, say they have posted everything in Kerry's Navy
file on his campaign Web site. The campaign said when the Navy sent
Kerry his military file, it did not include his medical records, but
Kerry had copies in his personal files.
On April 23, the Kerry campaign allowed 19 reporters who were
traveling with him, including one from The Associated Press, to view
the 36-page medical file for about 30 minutes while simultaneously
interviewing his personal physician on a conference call. The
physician wrote a three-page summary of the file that was posted on
the Web site.
The Kerry campaign would not allow the AP to have a medical reporter
present during that review and denied a request this week for a more
substantial review. Kerry also has refused to release a journal he
kept during his time in Vietnam, although parts were excerpted in
Douglas Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty."
Bush released hundreds of pages of military documents but did not post
them on a Web site. Bush also gave reporters limited access to his
wartime medical records.
***
"Probe with bayonets, looking for weakness."
--GOP Bully Boy Grover Norquist, quoting Lennin
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17514
.
|
