MRC’s Brent Baker reports that the media elite typically disliked the L word last night. Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham contended on MSNBC before the debate that the liberal tag “seems a little tinny these days. I think it’s a more serious time.” He argued that if Bush “simply throws red meat out that’s trouble.” After the debate, Boston Globe reporter Nina Easton complained on CNN that Republican have “ridden that tired horse of calling Kerry a liberal from Massachusetts and out of the mainstream, which doesn’t, I don’t think, play that well to swing voters.”
While it’s true that merely using the word “liberal” might seem a bit old, it might play well with swing voters if Bush can explain what the L word means: higher taxes, more government bureaucracy, lowered defense spending, seeing the leading foreign policy crisis as the lack of arms control and global warming agreements….
PS: Karl Rove must consider it a great strategic success that Kerry hasn’t really been suggesting too hard that Bush is too conservative, something the media love saying about Republicans.