There they go

[erikred]

I watched the debate tonight and came away thinking that Kerry had done a good job of defining his position and pointing out glaring errors in Bush's policies. I thought that Bush did a fine job of hitting his talking points, but since they mostly centered on Kerry's inability to define himself, they sounded pretty flat to me.

Now how the heck, I thought, will the GOP spin this into a victory? The answer? Easily!

I just watched Rudolph Giuliani on the Daily Show, and he stated, verbatim, the same talking points Bush spoke during the debate. The GOP's strategy? Pretend the debates never happened, and just keep hitting those talking points. If they say it's so enough times, maybe the American people will buy it! What the hell, it's been working so far.

Comments

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Cuz of course people can't actually agree with them! ;)

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Sure, people can agree with them all they want; it happens all the time. The difference is that usually there's at least some modicum of truth to agree with. This time around, agreeing with them means ignoring everything that was said during the debate.

If I tell you that the guy over there (yeah, him) is named Bob, and you buy it, that's fine. If the guy over there then comes over and shows us a driver's license that identifies him as Ben, but I continue to insist that his name is Bob, you're welcome to agree with me, but I'd hope you'd be doing so because you think I'm making a joke, not because I'm making a valid point based on any real evidence.

Bush says that Kerry is a flip-flopper because Kerry said Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he voted to give the Pres. war powers, and that he now says he didn't support the war in Iraq; Kerry said last night that he did say Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he did vote to give the Pres. war powers (on the condition that the Pres. would build a strong coalition, would plan the war carefully, and would only go to war as a last resort), and that he now says that since the Pres. did not build a strong coalition, did not plan the war carefully, and did not exhaust all other avenues before going to war, he did not support the way the Pres. ran the war in Iraq.

People are free to agree with Bush that Kerry flip-flopped on the war; the mental acrobatics they'll have to do to ignore what Kerry said in the debate, however, are stupendous.