Bush's crowd today was hand picked....

[kentuck]

How can he expect to win states like Michigan and Ohio if only his most avid supporters show up? He's not appealing to any new voters in those states and that is what he needs. His paranoia and secrecy is preventing him from meeting the people that he needs if he wants to beat John Kerry. This is a major flaw in his campaign, in my opinion. Of course, we hope he continues to campaign with his selected crowds.

[freetobegay]

1. The emperor is wearing no clothes.

[NC_Nurse]

2. Why would anyone besides his

adoring freeper fans show up to hear the usual canned statements he makes? You can predict the same rhetoric and non-answers to real questions that we always get from this cardboard cutout of a pres.

[bookman]

3. It's not the crowd...

..it is the appearance of an adoring crowd on the sound bites and news clips.

[stevedeshazer]

4. It's ALWAYS hand-picked. Always.

It is apparently not a major flaw as far as the US media are concerned. Bush has been doing this throughout his political career and the media have not called him on it. Biggest presidential media coverup since FDR and his wheelchair.

The Bushies can't do it any other way now. A REAL public appearance would be a disaster for them. They only have a papier mache facade over this story, which I think should be on the front page.

PRESIDENT AFRAID TO APPEAR IN PUBLIC

on edit: tried to fix my crappy grammar with only moderate success.

[unblock]

5. nonsense, they know what they're doing

the more people who see shrub, the more people hate him. they know to keep him away from real people.

the only image real people see of shrub is, to the extent they can control it, is the packaged, handled, gop-media-filtered depiction of a confident christian leader in charge :barf:

with a candidate like clinton, you get him out there to shake as many hands as possible. with a candidate like shrub, you hide him and run a lot of ads and get your surrogates to sling mud at the opponent.

[DAGDA56]

15. That's a very important point...

...the rituals we've come to associate with a Presidential Campaign, kissing babies, shaking hands, working a crowd or (like Harry Truman) addressing anybody who would show up from the back of a train, have never existed in the Bush* campaign. He is aloof and isolated, with only the camera angle being given any consideration.

[mouse7]

6. Dumbya ALWAYS speaks to hand-picked, bussed-in crowds

They never allow the general public anywhere near Dumbya. Been that way all the way back to the last campaign.

[fishnfla]

7. More like nose picked

bunch of hand picked nose pickers

[doni_georgia]

8. Crowds are ALWAYS hand picked for Bush photo ops

This is well known fact. Believe John Dean even mentioned it in Worse than Watergate (read too many books in the last week).

[AlCzervik]

9. I heard that on CNN today

the talking hair said"The handpicked crowd are the ones whom benefited directly from Mr. Bush's economic policies", i looked around the crowd and was expecting too see coalition contractors.

[readmylips]

10. I wouldn't cry for small man bush....

So what's new? His major news appearances are fake, his turkey is fake, his war suit is fake...we are not surprised at what that self proclaimed righteous bastard does anymore. As long as he has millionaires/billinaires around him, the rest of us are just slaves.

I don't even think that he's on that bus. The windows are so dark you can't see inside. He's too chicken to cruise the country in a bus. He's probably flown in just before he goes on stage.

[kentuck]

11. I'll bet you are absolutely right!

Makes him look "grassroots" if he is riding on a bus. I'll bet he isn't on the bus. :shrug:

[Vickers]

12. But...but...but Kerry threw RIBBONS and he said he threw MEDALS!!!

:eyes:

[supernova]

13. When is *'s crowd NOT

hand-picked?

He never performs in front of an open, live audience. They're always automatons. Sometimes that crowd goes by the name "White House Press Corps."

[loudsue]

14. If they dared to allowed "the public" to show up, he'd get boo'd

off the stage every time. Not to mention the protesters would get ring-side seats.....and get to watch him pee his pants when they boo'd him.

:kick:

[AlCzervik]

16. More like

pitchforks and torches!

[Nobody]

17. Are you sure that was Bush and not some stand-in?

If his crowds and photo ops are staged, they probably hire some actor who can speak English.

Because Bush can't.

[888]

18. ?

are you sure kerry is not doing the same thing?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

19. Yes, because there are plenty of your friends there disrupting

his appearances.