Let the Sliming Begin

In what can only be considered both a sign of desperation and a sign that they are intellectually bankrupt the Bush Administration has unveiled its new stump speech.

Make the issue about John Kerry.

President Bush inaugurated a new lean, mean stump speech last week that aimed the AK-47's directly at his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry. On Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Mr. Bush charged that Mr. Kerry's policies would make the world a more dangerous place, and that he had a "20-year history of weakness" in the United States Senate and a "strategy of defeat" in Iraq.

The speech, Mr. Bush's campaign officials said, revealed a president on an all-out offensive in the final stretch of the race.

But what was really revealing was what the president left out.

Gone was one of Mr. Bush's favorite phrases, used just four days earlier in Ohio, about the "transformational power of liberty." Gone was his familiar line that freedom is "the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." Gone, too, was his sunny prediction that someday an American president would sit down with "a duly elected leader of Iraq" to talk about how to keep the peace in the "greater Middle East."

...

A Republican close to the Bush campaign said that the changes in the 40-minute stump speech were made on the "strong recommendation" of Karl Rove, the president's chief strategist, and that the new presidential attack was working. "It's resonating with voters more than the language about the bigger issues and bigger goals of a Bush presidency," asserted the Republican, who asked not to be named because the campaign does not want its advisers publicly discussing strategy. "You know it from polling, you know it from focus groups."

If this works, where the incumbent decides to not defend his policies and chart a future course in his reelection, it will be one of the first occasions ever.

This election is by nature a referendum on Bush, yet, out of touch, as ever, the Rovian brain believes that a steady stream of bashing will drive up Kerry's negatives so high that voters will not come out to vote for him, while Bush's base will be energized.

Fat chance Karl.