Bush effort to define Kerry negatively 'isn't mission accomplished'

[Feanorcurufinwe]

GOP pollster says Bush effort to define Kerry negatively 'isn't mission accomplished'

President Bush's multimillion-dollar attempt to define Democrat John Kerry negatively through advertising hasn't done a good enough job and "isn't mission accomplished," a Republican pollster says.

"The Bush campaign needs to move Kerry further to the left to make him unelectable," pollster Tony Fabrizio wrote Thursday in a memo. Continuing to allow Kerry to be seen by voters as "a benign liberal," Fabrizio wrote, is "a grave and costly strategic error."

The memo outlined results of a poll Fabrizio's firm took of voters in 19 states where most of Bush's television ads have run. The poll found that the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort "isn't mission accomplished,"' wrote Fabrizio, who was Bob Dole's pollster in the Republican's unsuccessful 1996 presidential bid.

<snip>

Fabrizio, who supports Bush, said his polling shows that large numbers of voters overall and, more importantly, large numbers of undecided and independent voters, don't know about the key anti-Kerry messages Bush's campaign tried to plant in their minds through ads.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/12/politics2049EDT0781.DTL

[Wickerman]

1. Fabrizio should learn it is never "Mission Accomplished" with Bush

a simple review of his resume would show that.

And, folks aren't going to buy anymore of the bullshit. The 1/2 of the US pop that can think beyond soundbytes looks past the rhetoric and sees that Bush* ain't got spit.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

2. I was suprised there was no specific attack ad data

I thought maybe Fabrizio was who Josh Marshall was refering to yesterday...

[Wickerman]

3. yeah, it would seem there should be a stat or two

that defines or disputes effectiveness. :shrug:

[lancdem]

4. Fabrizio is the pollster

who reported the Swift Boat Liars ad was making some impact. This memo seems to overrule that. :shrug: