blog report

Democrats and Demo Tapes

February 17, 2004

With voting underway in Wisconsin between Kerry and the other guys, the blogosphere has already moved on to the ins-and-outs of the Kerry-Bush contest.

Mickey Kaus signs on with the suggestion from this morning’s Washington Post that Republicans should attack John Kerry not as a Massachusetts liberal, but as a “Washington veteran politician who says one thing and does another.” Kaus: “This non-anti-Dukakis attack would have one particularly devastating aspect: It would be accurate.” Kaus then poses an arch question: “Are Republicans that smart?”

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has this to say about the Clark V.P. rumors: “Sounds like a poor choice to me. … The most charitable thing you can say about Clark is that he’s inept. … to me he looks like a guy who’s willing to do or say anything to advance his career, but who isn’t very good at figuring out what to do or say.”

Via Wonkette, after last Friday’s contentious press gaggle, Cablenewser reports that Fox News correspondent James Rosen leaned over to Bush press secretary Scott McClellan and remarked, “Scott, you did not do a good job for your boss today.”

Skip over to Tapped, and you’ll read about Rep. Bob Dornan’s (R-CA) appearance on Hardball last night in which he argued that Kerry’s service in Vietnam does not do him credit because he only served two months under combat fire. Matthew Yglesias points out it was more like four months, adding that “You can argue if you like that this impressive war record isn’t relevant to a presidential election, but trying to deny that it’s impressive is just absurd.”

Finally, for those of you who have held onto that demo tape of the really wretched high school band you formed, the Knight Ridder blog reports that Kerry’s sold for $2,551 on Ebay. “Kerry played electric bass for the prep school band at New Hampshire’s elite St. Paul’s School in 1961. Only 500 copies of the album were made.”

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–Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.