Campaigns seize on Reagan's legacy (Classic Bush)

[CShine]

After three days of suspended political activity, the Bush campaign began openly incorporating Ronald Reagan's death into its reelection message yesterday, revamping its website to give Reagan a dominant role and distributing official campaign letters that invoke the former president. Since Reagan's death Saturday, Bush has repeatedly offered glowing praise of the 40th president in ways that echo his own reelection efforts, but were not overtly political.

Yesterday, his campaign took the refrain into the political realm. Bush officials sent an e-mail inviting supporters to add to a "living memorial" on the campaign website -- one click away from the page that solicits campaign donations and recruits volunteers. Visitors to the official campaign site were automatically redirected to the Reagan tribute, paid for by the Bush/Cheney committee. It replaced the spot usually occupied by the campaign home page.

<snip>

Bush has long sought to portray himself as Reagan's ideological heir, and with Reagan's death, he has augmented those efforts. When Bush was asked about Reagan yesterday, he responded in terms largely reflecting his own reelection theme. "Ronald Reagan will go down in history as a great American president because he had a core set of principles from which he would not deviate," Bush said from the G-8 summit in Georgia, during a joint appearance with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan. "He understood that a leader is a person who sets clear goals and makes decisions based upon principles that are etched in his soul."

Republicans say it would be impossible to separate Reagan's death from the current presidential race, or to take politics out of his death and burial this week. "It's unavoidable," said Grover Norquist, conservative activist and Reagan champion.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/06/09/campaigns_seize_on_reagans_legacy/

[NMDemDist2]

1. OMG

:puke:

but I expected as much

[JaySherman]

2. He already exploits dead soldiers.

What's to stop him from exploiting a dead President? Certainly not a conscience.

[Democat]

3. The entire media would be "outraged" if a Democrat did the same

The U.S. media sucks.

[blueintexas]

5. They already did

Paul Wellstone

[PurityOfEssence]

4. Dems should use clips of Bush I decrying "voodoo economics"

during the '80 primary. There are plenty of clips of this, and some go into great detail in predicting exactly what happened.

[Rex]

6. Move over Lenin, Reagan gets his own State tome!

Can I barf now?

[frylock]

7. gravytraining reagan's corpse is all they have left

[Blasphemer]

8. What does Nancy have to say about this crap?

And Ron Jr. as well? It's beyond the pale. These people are the first to scream bloody murder if something is supposedly politicized against them but have no shame in using tragedy for their own benefit. At any rate, they fact that they are clinging to this is SO desperate it's not funny. Their only hope is to galvanize the hardliners to come out en masse in November and they think Ronnie's death will help - good luck to that.

[Submariner]

9. Bush is running negative campaign TV ads against Kerry this week

here in S. Florida. And here I thought that chimpy suspended them like Kerry out of decency for.....never mind.

[TahitiNut]

10. They've been running all day in Michigan, too.

Detestable. :puke:

[Blasphemer]

11. Yeah...

I saw a new one for the first time in awhile today here in Oregon. Trying to convince us the economy is just peachy and Kerry is a "pessimist" who talks about the Depression. However, whatever deal they had is clearly over with (maybe they will halt them on Friday too?) as I saw a couple of Kerry ads and the great Bush and Halliburton ad that was produced by the Media Fund.