Kerry the Frontrunner -- but Will Momentum Continue?
by Bill Fancher and Chad Groening
January 30, 2004
(AgapePress) - John Kerry may be the undisputed frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination -- but there are those who are questioning if he can keep the momentum going until the party's convention in July.The four-term Massachusetts senator has taken the top prize in the country's first two presidential outings -- the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Along with the other Democratic candidates, he is now looking forward to "Super Tuesday" (February 3), when seven states -- Missouri, South Carolina, Arizona, Delaware, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and North Dakota -- convene their respective primaries or caucuses.
While Kerry clearly has the momentum going into next week, a former GOP presidential candidate says the lawmaker from the Bay State has a big problem to overcome before he can win the Democratic nomination.
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Gary Bauer |
"In his 19 years in Congress, he's made thousands of votes," Gary Bauer notes, "and I can guarantee you that [when Kerry looks back on] those votes, there are going to be dozens, perhaps even hundreds, that [he] will have wished he had not made."Bauer notes two examples of Kerry's voting record that will likely come back to haunt him: his vote against the Apache helicopter, which is now the mainstay of the U.S. Army, and the numerous times he voted to slash intelligence funding prior to 9-11. That latter issue has been one of the contributing causes discovered in the investigation into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Those kinds of issues will come back and be brought up," Bauer explains. "[That's] one of the reasons that only two U.S. senators have been elected president of the United States."
Another conservative political analyst says while the results of the New Hampshire primary were a big plus for Kerry, they also represented a defeat for former President Bill Clinton, whose chosen candidate -- General Wesley Clark -- finished a distant third. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus says Clark's defeat now makes him a non-factor in the Democratic presidential race.
"With Kerry burnishing supposed national security credentials, Wesley Clark becomes more or less irrelevant," Phillips says. "In addition, you now have another Southern candidate in John Edwards [a U.S. senator from North Carolina] -- and going south, into South Carolina on Super Tuesday [February 3], Edwards rather than Clark will be the Southern candidate."
Phillips, who for many decades has watched the way Washington functions, feels like Kerry will carry the party's hopes in November.
Unpredictable Electorate?
A Massachusetts businessman who wants to replace Democratic Representative Barney Frank in Congress says John Kerry would not be a strong candidate against President Bush. While Chuck Morse says for his own political reasons, he would rather see Howard Dean as the candidate, he believes Kerry may have difficulty carrying his own liberal state.
"He's got a lot of problems in Massachusetts," Morse says of Kerry. "Let's not forget that Michael Dukakis [a former governor of Massachusetts] almost lost the state in 1988 [to George H.W. Bush] -- and that Massachusetts voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984."
Kerry, he says, does not have a lock on Massachusetts should he be Bush's opponent in November. "I think that President Bush ... is going to be a very strong candidate," he says. "And President Bush has said that he is going to be competitive in all 50 states, which means he will probably come to Massachusetts."
The same voters who have re-elected Kerry and Senator Ted Kennedy several times also elected Mitt Romney governor of their state in November 2002, making him the fourth consecutive Republican to hold that office.
