Kerry’s liberalism a weapon for Bush

President Bush’s re-election campaign has begun a concerted effort to divide the Democratic Party by forcing its congressional candidates to either embrace or reject Sen. John Kerry’s liberalism.

“This is one of the huge stories of the campaign,” said Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. “You’re going to see a lot of efforts by Republican candidates and by the campaign to ask where people stand.”

Earlier this month, for example, Rep. David Vitter, a Republican who is seeking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. John B. Breaux of Louisiana, challenged his three Democratic rivals to endorse Mr. Kerry’s support for higher taxes and opposition to a constitutional amendment banning homosexual “marriage.”

In a conference call with Louisiana reporters that was set up by the Bush campaign, Mr. Vitter also demanded that his rivals take a stand on recent remarks by billionaire Democratic financier George Soros, who last week compared the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“I think that’s an outrageous statement,” Mr. Vitter said. “We need to hear what John Kerry thinks about that statement, what the U.S. Senate candidates in Louisiana from the Democratic Party think about that statement.”

Such demands have particular resonance in the South, where Democrats tend to be more conservative than in other parts of the country, said Bush campaign spokesman Reed Dickens.

“It’s not just a Louisiana story,” he said. “We’re going to broaden it out to maybe about four other states in the South and maybe the Midwest.

“We’re going to start to try to highlight the fact that Senate candidates are going out of their way not to endorse Kerry and not to say a word about him,” he added. “Or if they do endorse him, they keep their distance.”

Mr. Mehlman suggested that the strategy has the potential to split the Democratic Party along ideological fault lines.

“The way that Democrats are able to get elected in states like Louisiana and South Dakota and Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina is by running as Louisiana or South Dakota or North Carolina Democrats, not as liberal Democrats from Washington,” he said.

“And the problem that the Democrat candidates are going to have is they’re going to have to choose between either the John Kerry Democrat Party, which does not represent the values and interests of the people at home, or representing the values and interests of the people at home, which means you’re not standing at a lot of podiums with John Kerry,” he added.

But one recent prominent race suggests that Democrats can win in conservative-leaning states if they do wash their hands of Mr. Kerry.

Democrat Stephanie Herseth, who did not invite Mr. Kerry to campaign for her, won the June 1 South Dakota special House election against Republican Larry Diedrich, who enjoyed campaign visits by Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush.

On issues ranging from the war on terror to welfare reform, Mr. Vitter said Democrats are vulnerable.

“In most cases,” he said, “my Democratic opponents in the Senate race have voted like John Kerry. They just are trying to avoid admitting it.”

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