From Tapped:
"THE BEST THEY CAN DO. Candy Crowley on CNN is describing Dick Cheney's best moment in the debate as "when he put John Kerry's votes on Iraq in a political perspective -- 'if you can't stand up to Howard Dean, how are you going to stand up to al-Qaeda?'" I'll grant that this is a clever joke, but what kind of sense does it make? The reference was to the $87 billion supplemental appropriation, which Kerry was willing to vote for as long as George W. Bush would pay for it by repealing some tax cuts for the rich rather than by borrowing from future generations. George Bush said he would veto that version of the bill. So if Bush can't stand up to his wealthy campaign contributors, how is he going to stand up to al-Qaeda?"
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/From Ryan Lizza (an actual copy of RNC talking points accidentally sent to the press)
"TO: BC'04 Surrogates
FROM: BC'04 Communication
RE: Talking Points ...
We will be sending more talking points later this evening, but the decisive line by Vice President Cheney during the debate was the following:
"So they, in effect, decided they would cast an anti-war vote, and they voted against the troops. Now, if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaeda?"...
"UPDATE: Bill Kristol just told his Fox News audience that Cheney's line about Dean was the best line of the night. A minute later on the same program Rich Lowry said, "And Bill is absolutely right about that Howard Dean line, which I thought was devastating." Talk about message discipline."
(corrected for spelling--they had stand up as one word; W. must have helped with the editing)
http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=2155So nice Candy could stay on message.