MRC’s Brian Boyd offered me a look at the CBS “Early Show” transcript from this morning about Bush’s phone call to Kerry last night:
Bob Schieffer: “Well, I thought it was a gracious thing to do and maybe that’s why he did it. I don’t know why he did it but he said, you know, ‘let’s talk about the issues.’ Well, we all know that one of the first things they’re going to do is not talk about the issues –”
Harry Smith: “Take the gloves off.”
Schieffer: “They’re going to define John Kerry, and they’re going to try to paint him as a left-wing liberal who’s out of touch with the rest of the country. But we may have a few issues creep in there. And I think when you get to the bottom line here, there’ll be some rough stuff here at the front, but this election is going to be about issues. It’s going to be about jobs and it’s going to be about the war in Iraq. Those two things will drive this election.”