Word: doles
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Some politicians had to accommodate a lot faster than Dole or Clinton. In Washington State first-term Republican Congressman Randy Tate, elected in 1994 as a classic young conservative revolutionary, ran television commercials in 1996 denouncing his Democratic opponent (named, hilariously, Adam Smith) as a lying "liberal." Smith's alleged liberal lies were mainly that Tate wanted to cut a variety of liberal spending programs--not just Medicare but also student loans and so on. Tate, the ads insisted, actually voted to increase spending on these programs...
Republicans like Tate (and Dole) have a legitimate complaint here. Democrats, from Clinton on down, found their best issue this year in overstating if not actually fabricating Republican designs to shrink the government. In that sense you could say that this election was indeed "stolen." Claiming the center ground and painting the opposition as extreme is a standard campaign strategy, but it is a game the Republicans have played much better than the Democrats until this year. For the Democrats to play it suddenly with equal success does seem almost like cheating. Two things made this possible. Republicans are happy...
...would ever have believed that Whitewater, the money-losing land deal that has dogged the Clintons since the last campaign, would deliver a political payoff? But the more Bob Dole mentioned it, even when delicately veiling the subject in the broader "character" issue, the more it seemed to make Dole look meanspirited...
...America, the election was won and lost on the Message--the ability to divine the hopes, fears and desires of voters, then craft the ideas, words and images that would best reach them. Bill Clinton built the most sensitive radar apparatus American politics has ever seen; Bob Dole looked at the same public mood but failed to read its meaning. This is the inside story of the Dole and Clinton message teams: the pollsters, strategists and admakers who made and sold their messages not only to the public but to the candidates...
When Gingrich shut down the government a second time, in December, Dole drew the line. He walked onto the Senate floor and ended it without telling Gingrich or anyone else. He was being true to himself, but he acted too late. Clinton had won. He shot ahead of Dole in the polls; it was never close again. Clinton's genius was to choose a winning hand from both sets of advisers: he co-opted the balanced budget, as the consultants advised, and demagogued Medicare the way the Old Guard wanted. This created his key message: "Balancing the budget...