Bush's rapid response?
"John Kerry is the number one Senate recipient of banker donations over the past 15 years, and his attacks today are completely hypocritical," said spokesman Steve Schmidt.I had two immediate thoughts as I was reading this rebuttal.
1.Kerry's hypocritical for advocating legislation that doesn't help a group he's accepted money from? What an insight into Bush's world!! Apparently Bush can't grasp that someone would accept money from a special interest group and then not do that group special favors. In fact, Bush seems to view the act of blocking your donor as a grievous sin. Hmm. Why would that be?
2. And what does it say about the fact that, in this presidential campaign, Bush has taken more than 3 times the amount Kerry has ($28.2M to $7.9M) from the the Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sector? In contrast to Kerry, Bush has no trouble standing up for his donors--calling legislation not in their favor "attacks".
But then maybe Bush has some evidence that Kerry did do some special favor for his patrons. What dirt did he dig up from Kerry's 20-year Senate record?
"This is another example of Kerry's willingness to say one thing and do another. If John Kerry really cared about bank customers, he wouldn't have skipped the vote on the fair credit legislation that the president signed to ensure fair treatment of credit applicants and to prevent identity theft."There you have it, Gentlemen! What more evidence do we need!! Kerry skipped out on a crucial vote. Presumably, the Bush campaign is talking about the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, which passed late last year and was signed into law in December 2003. So the vote must have been a close won fight, right, in which Kerry's presence would make or break the vote? Not exactly. The Senate passed the bill by 95-2. Then after conferencing with the House on an amendment, the Senate passed the final verion by unanimous consent. Wow! Sure was lucky Kerry wasn't there to stand up for his donors and in the way of justice!
Bottom line:
In Bush's world, standing up for a good cause in spite of taking money from a group opposed to the cause is hypocritical.
In Kerry's world, it's principled.
