The partisan hack David Brooks
is very worried.
"So now I'm disillusioned. What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there's been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else. .."
Kerry's extreme makeover, the 'muscular liberalism' may become equvalent to Bush's 'compassionate conservative'. This time around, Independents leaning toward right may become fools..
Reaction to Kerry's speech
Kerry began with no outright supporters -- only a widespread disaffection with Bush that made them hungry for an alternative. None said they felt they knew "who Kerry is as a person," as Ronnie Burgess, 36, a travel counselor for AAA, put it. And they all said they had been affected by seeing numerous Bush campaign ads portraying Kerry as a flip-flopper.
Sprecher, a sales and marketing representative whose son-in-law was denied release from the Army Reserve two years ago and is due to go to Iraq in January, exclaimed "Thank you!" when Kerry vowed to "end the backdoor draft" of National Guard members and reservists. And Alim Kamara, 31, a social studies teacher, clapped loudly when Kerry said he would name an attorney general who upholds the Constitution.
All said they were impressed with Kerry's national security credentials, but they talked more about domestic issues. Kathryn Paolilli, 46, a mother of four who voted for Bush in 2000, said her main complaint about the president is his infusion of Christianity into politics. She smiled widely and nodded when Kerry said: "I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, 'I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.' "
"He is not supposed to be full of energy," said Greg Maurer, 37, an intellectual-property lawyer and a Catholic Republican from a military family. "He was energizing me. I felt like I need to go out and do something for the country."
Maurer voted for Bush last time and said he would probably vote for him again -- yet Kerry's speech planted seeds of doubt. "You could picture him in the White House, and we would be proud he was there," Maurer said. "I never had that image of him before."