Word: traction
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Just as he was finding his target, Dole abandoned the drug message and switched to the charge that Clinton was a "spend-and-tax liberal." The Clintonites were relieved. "With the drug spots," says Penn, "Dole was getting some traction by painting Clinton as a social liberal. The notion that he was an economic liberal was less effective because the economy is sound...
...staying positive, but there is a creeping realization that things will not turn out in his favor. Weeks ago the campaign had more energy, and Dole was more angry, lashing out at the New York Times and so on." In recent days, Dole has tried to get some political traction over the issue of the President's relationship with John Huang, the former Democratic fundraiser who steered millions from the billionaire Riady family of Indonesia into Democratic coffers. Unfortunately for the GOP, Dole's persistent questioning of the Clinton Administration's ethical standards probably won't resonate with voters come...
...Washington these days, there's a feeling of political deja vu. The time: 1972. The candidates: George McGovern and Richard Nixon. President Nixon was headed for a landslide re-election. McGovern was assailing the President on ethics and trying to get some traction on a little-known scandal called Watergate...
This approach is unlikely to divert Dole from the drug issue. But it is most uncertain whether that will really give him much traction. "Cataclysmic" is how a Dole adviser describes the effect of a government survey purporting to show that teenage drug use doubled from 1992 to 1995. But polls of voters taken even after that widely publicized finding still rank drugs roughly fifth among the issues that most concern the electorate (the economy is No. 1). One reason may be that people do not see among their own children and the children's classmates quite as great...
...more politics than principle behind the gesture. How better to portray Clinton as an extremist than by reminding voters that he had defended a practice that big majorities find repugnant? What better gift to give Bob Dole, as he searches for the wedge issues that might give him traction with the conservative and Roman Catholic voters who should form the base of his support...