{"id":2684,"date":"2004-10-05T10:53:27","date_gmt":"2004-10-05T15:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2684.html"},"modified":"2004-10-05T10:53:27","modified_gmt":"2004-10-05T15:53:27","slug":"when-the-bush-campaign-has-to-spin-against-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/when-the-bush-campaign-has-to-spin-against-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Bush campaign has to spin against itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, as more polls showed Bush’s September leads evaporating, the Bush campaign acted like these developments weren’t surprising<\/a> at all.<\/p>\n

BC04 campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel told ABC News’ Karen Travers that the campaign has always expected a close race.<\/p>\n

“Since day one, we have indicated it would be a close race,” Stanzel said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the appropriate spin given the circumstances, but it’s not true at all. The Bush campaign has been indicating the opposite.<\/p>\n

In fact, for the two weeks immediately preceding the Miami debate, the Bush campaign in general, and Karl Rove in specific, presented the campaign as a done deal. “Inevitability” had officially kicked in.
\n
\nIn a luncheon interview with the ultra-conservative Washington Times two weeks ago, for example, Rove said<\/a> Bush had already shored up support in Red states and was on his way to taking over in Blue states.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot more blue territory that’s been trending purple and red, and a lot less red that’s been getting any tinge of blue in it, and that’s good for us,” he said. “We’re forcing the battle consistently onto their” turf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Far from indicating this will be a “close race,” Rove said West Virginia and Ohio were no longer competitive for Kerry, and New Hampshire and Nevada aren’t much closer. He sounded like he had just renewed his DC lease for another four years.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Slate’s Chris Suellentrop noted<\/a> just a few days before the debate that “Republicans are starting to make preposterously overconfident predictions of a Bush landslide.”<\/p>\n

By even making the argument about how close the race is after the campaign has been insisting on the opposite, Stanzel is acknowledging how very nervous the Bush campaign has become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, as more polls showed Bush’s September leads evaporating, the Bush campaign acted like these developments weren’t surprising at all. BC04 campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel told ABC News’ Karen Travers that the campaign has always expected a close race. “Since day one, we have indicated it would be a close race,” Stanzel said. That’s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}