How chasing the ''gun guy'' image is hurting Kerry in swing states

By Chad D. Baus

Since the Democrat party has based its entire hate-Bush campaign on Michael Moore conspiracy theories, I would like to offer up one more theory for them to chew on:

The Clintonistas John Kerry hired in September to rescue his campaign want Hillary to run in '08, and they are using the gun issue to sabotage John Kerry in swing states.

Though some Democrats have no trouble believing that President Bush is personally going to stand at the polls to turn away black voters, I am certain they will have trouble accepting my theory about the gun issue. So let me explain.

Before September, the Kerry campaign was winning on the gun issue. Liberal Democrats win on the gun issue by making it a non-issue, and that's just what it was before September.

With the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban sunset in view, campaign watchers marveled at Kerry's silence. The gun ban extremist wing of Kerry's base didn't fret, however, knowing that the campaign had implemented a strategy devised by the founder of Americans for Gun "Safety", billionaire Andrew McKelvey, to fool gun owners with kinder, gentler words for gun control.

It was working. Despite having published dozens of articles in members' magazines highlighting Kerry's scary history of voting against gun rights, Kayne Robinson, president of the National Rifle Association, recently told reporters that polls taken during the summer showed that "40 percent of gun owners thought Kerry was not very threatening on gun issues."

About one-fourth of the NRA's 4 million members live in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — all battleground states with 101 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. In Ohio alone, about 900,000 people have hunting licenses. During the Bush presidency, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio have passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms - Florida, Pennsylvania and West Virginia already had such laws.

Kerry, whom the NRA had already labeled "the most anti-gun candidate we've ever had," was doing well, having lulled to sleep the giant pro-gun voting block.

And then came September. The Swift Vets had Kerry struggling in the polls, and in a widely-publicized rescue move, former Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville, Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis and Joe Lockhart join the campaign.

In the first week, Kerry's "saviors" had succeeded in placing the gun issue on the front page of every newspaper in America, by staging a photo-op of Kerry being given a shotgun as a gift from union workers in West Virginia. The stunt quickly became a gaffe, when it was discovered that the gun was on the list of firearms that would be banned under a still-active S. 1431, which Kerry is co-sponsoring. Kerry left the gun behind in West Virginia, and the polls there have since left him far behind as well.

That same month, remarks attributed to Kerry in Outdoor Life magazine spurned rumors that the candidate had smuggled a "Communist Chinese assault rifle" back from Vietnam as a "reminder of his service". When questioned, he quickly blamed the comments on an unnamed campaign aide who filled out the interview questionnaire for him.

Lately, the gun-gaffe brigade has been most active in Ohio.

When the Kerry campaign announced that the candidate was looking for a place to stage a photo op of him shooting clay pigeons, the gun issue again made headlines, in that he was having trouble finding an open door. Club after club in the Buckeye State told the campaign Mr. Kerry wasn't welcome.

In Cincinnati, two weeks after the Clinton Gun Ban expired, Kerry told a Cincinnati crowd that "Today, a terrorist can come into a gun show in America and buy a weapon of war, and they couldn't do that before George Bush refused to support an assault weapons ban." But most gun owners know Kerry's assertions about new avenues for terrorists at gun shows are ridiculous. Far from controlling "weapons of war", the ban outlawed certain semi-automatic firearms with cosmetic features that made them look militaristic.

Next stop for Kerry, a southern Ohio grocery store, where he offered his best impression of how he must think us uncultured Ohioans speak: "Can I get me a hunting license here?"

And of course the entire nation has now heard about the infamous Ohio goose shoot, at which a camo-clad Kerry proclaimed that he was "too lazy" to carry his bird off the hunting field. It has since been discovered that to pull off the stunt, Kerry had to borrow the gun and even the camouflage coat. Dick Cheney calls Kerry's move the "October Disguise", and President Bush quips that Kerry can "run [from his Senate record] in camo, but he cannot hide."

Quite a reversal from the months of carefully-orchestrated silence on the gun issue, no? Which brings me back to my conspiracy theory.

Bill Clinton has credited gun-owners for handing Democrats a stinging defeat in 1994. After he signed his assault weapons ban, the Democrats lost 20 seats in the House, giving Republicans the majority for the first time in decades. In 2000, Al Gore campaigned on gun control, and lost West Virginia, Arkansas and his home state of Tennessee. Bill Clinton said that the NRA “probably had more to do than anyone else in the fact that we didn’t win the House this time. And they hurt Al Gore.”

This is a lesson Bill Clinton's former aides could not have forgotten. Yet since the Clintonistas began their "No, really, he's a gun-guy" pitch to the swing states, the campaign has been forced to pull advertising from West Virginia and Missouri, and the polls suggest formerly-blue states of Michigan and Pennsylvania are turning a rosy shade of pink.

The sleeping giant has been awakened.

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the Kerry campaign war room, I suspect the "saviors" are smiling. And if the Michael Moore followers listen closely, they may even hear them whisper:

"Hillary in '08."