Word: furloughs
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...Republican assault on Dukakis' furlough policy had stopped with making these valid points, Democrats and blacks would have no just cause for complaint. But the Republican attack did not stop there. Instead, Bush's handlers tapped into the rich lode of white fear and resentment of blacks that the G.O.P. staked out more than 20 years ago, when the party of Lincoln recast itself as the embodiment of the white backlash. It started with Barry Goldwater railing against Earl Warren's Supreme Court and civil rights legislation. Then, as the long hot summers blazed, Richard Nixon courted voters with...
...Michael Dukakis a gooey liberal out of touch with mainstream values, none worked better than the relentless pounding of Horton's horrible tale. By the end of the campaign, scarcely a voter had not been exposed to the lurid details of the rapacious spree Horton committed while on weekend furlough from the Massachusetts prison to which he had been sentenced to life without parole for a brutal 1974 homicide...
Like most attack ploys, there was a grain of truth to be exploited: the prison-furlough policy used by Massachusetts went beyond the boundaries of common sense. Unlike other states and the Federal Government, which usually employ furloughs to gradually acclimate prisoners near the end of their sentences to living outside the walls, Massachusetts granted weekend leaves to convicts whom judges had condemned to remain behind bars until they died. Horton is precisely the sort of criminal that people have in mind when they say someone should lock him up and throw away...
...Dukakis' rivals for the Democratic nomination, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, who first unearthed the furlough policy as a campaign issue. The fact that it was inaugurated by Dukakis' Republican predecessor is irrelevant. As Governor, Dukakis stubbornly resisted attempts to rescind furloughs for first-degree murderers until a drive to ban such leaves through a state referendum gathered steam. By then, the presidential-primary season was under...
Bush struck with a five-minute ad that servedas a reprise of his campaign-long attacks on hisDemocratic rival. It featured Massachusettsresidents complaining about their governor'shandling of pollution problems in Boston Harbor,about the state's prison furlough program andabout the state's economy, including budgetshortfalls...