Republicans thought they could replay 2004 and win by lying about John Kerry’s positions, this time claiming that a joke about George Bush was a slur against the troops. The polls are showing that it didn’t work. In trying to replay 2004, the White House failed to recognize that in a rematch of the 2004 election John Kerry would beat George Bush in a landslide. If anything, the attack on Kerry made this even more a referendum on Iraq and resulted in a further decline in Republican support, as in Newsweek’s poll:
The new poll finds support for Republicans (and for President Bush) receding. For example, 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win enough seats to take control of one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections on Tuesday. Those results are close to early October levels, while less than a third of Americans (32 percent) want Republicans to retain control. If the elections were held today, 54 percent of likely voters say they would support the Democratic candidate in their district versus 38 percent who would vote for the Republican-a 16-point edge for the Democrats.
Despite round-the-clock coverage of John Kerry’s Iraq gaffe this week and non-stop rallies in which the President paints Democrats as weak-on-terror tax lovers, the political momentum has returned to the Democrats. Maybe that’s because nearly a third of registered voters (32 percent) now say Iraq is the most important issue in deciding their vote. The economy comes in second at 19 percent. And just 12 percent say terrorism, the Republican trump card in the last three elections, is their most important issue. In fact, as millions of Americans fill in their employers’ health-care selection forms for next year, terrorism is statistically tied with health care at 11 percent.
Meanwhile, the President’s approval has fallen back to 35 percent, after a slow but steady rise from 33 percent at the beginning of October to 37 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll last week.
Even Joan Vennoachi, who rarely misses a chance to bash Kerry, had to admit that Kerry’s botched joke did not help the Republicans as they expected:
Yet a Democracy Corps survey of 1,200 likely voters, released Nov. 2 by Washington-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, indicates the fears are groundless. Four-hundred interviews were conducted after two news cycles of Kerry stories and “the story has not helped Republicans,” the pollsters said. Voters are focused on Iraq as a reason to vote for a Democrat. “The trends on Iraq promise disaster for the Republicans,” the pollsters conclude.
