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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
'Filibusted,' Kerry goes ad-to-ad with Dean and Dubya
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
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Lookin' for a fight: John Kerry challenges President Bush on two fronts today -- Medicare and the war on terrorism.
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Senators spent a rare Sunday session debating a sweeping Medicare bill that for the first time would offer retirees prescription drug coverage.
U.S. President Bush and first lady Laura Bush came home from a three day official visit to England.
A recent poll said men under 5-foot-10 are more likely to be Republicans.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- If John Kerry can't filibuster the Medicare bill, which looks increasingly unlikely, then he'll have to find another way to go head-to-head with President Bush today.
Plan B: The Comeback Kid will launch a new TV ad in Iowa tonight that matches the RNC's buy from last week and, like Kerry's previous ad, uses "Mission Accomplished" footage of Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
"George Bush's ad says he's being attacked for attacking the terrorists," a narrator says in the 30-second spot, which will be aired in every Iowa media market. "No, Mr. President, America's united against terror. The problem is you declared 'mission accomplished' but you had no plan to win the peace, and handed out billions in contracts to contributors like Halliburton."
Next comes Kerry himself, clad in blue shirt and necktie, who says he approved this message "because we can't go it alone in Iraq. We have to share the burden with other countries. We shouldn't be cutting education and closing firehouses in America while we're opening them in Iraq."
Kerry's face may appear on TV screens in Iowa tonight, but he and John Edwards, stuck in Washington for Senate Medicare votes, won't appear in person at the Democratic National Committee/MSNBC debate in Des Moines, scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Instead, the senators arranged late last night to participate via satellite from Washington studios. Two onstage television screens will show Edwards and Kerry, alongside six rivals who will be there in person.
Joe Lieberman, who has pulled out of Iowa and had declined to attend the Des Moines debate, cried foul after being excluded from the satellite plan. Lieberman asked to participate by satellite, as well. The DNC consulted with the other campaigns, at least two of which said he shouldn't be allowed to participate, sources said. (Full story)
"We think this is unfair," Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera told the Grind. "The rules of the debate were changed and two candidates were allowed to participate remotely. Given these rule changes, we obviously were interested in debating. We're sure any technological problems can be worked out."
We doubt that this is the end of the story, as the DNC -- ever vigilant of avoiding appearing to snub their candidates -- didn't consult other '04 Dems after Wesley Clark changed his plans to participate in the December 9 debate in New Hampshire.
Kerry's not alone in responding to the RNC ad. Howard Dean is running a new ad today in Iowa that says Bush "misled the nation about weapons of mass destruction. And we went to war when we shouldn't have." Dean's campaign will spend $360,000 on the buy, money it hopes to raise on the Internet specifically for the media buy, campaign manager Joe Trippi said.
Medicare wrangling
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's aides are confident that the Medicare bill will survive a series of Democrat-inspired challenges Monday and pass in the late afternoon or evening. A cloture vote may come around 12:30 p.m.
If Republicans can find two more Democratic votes for the energy bill, that, too, may be voted on. Frist believes he has the 60 votes needed to end the filibuster being led by Ted Kennedy and Kerry, and Kennedy's spokesman acknowledges the senator doesn't have the 41 votes needed to sustain a filibuster.
As if to underscore Frist's confidence, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said yesterday that she'll oppose the filibuster and vote in favor of the Medicare bill. Several other Democrats and moderate Republicans have also said they will support the bill. Sen. John Breaux, who helped write it, says he thinks more than 76 senators will ultimately vote for it.
If, as expected, the cloture vote succeeds and the filibuster is ended, Democrats are expected to try to block the bill by other means. Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who opposes the bill, won't say what those other means are, but Frist's office expects it to be challenged under "budget points of order" where opponents will argue that the bill exceeds the $400 billion price tag set by Congress earlier this year. Frist's office expects those points of order to fail and a final vote around 4 p.m. EST.
For his part, Lieberman yesterday came out strongly against the Medicare bill, and for the Kennedy-Kerry filibuster, after remaining non-committal last week. "Millions will lose benefits they have now for drug coverage. And the entire Medicare system will be under siege from Republicans who really want to privatize it. It makes no sense to me," Lieberman said during a press availability after appearing on CNN's "Late Edition." "In fact, the cost of the private Medicare substitute plans, in the last few years, have gone up twice as much as Medicare itself has. In fact, this is a case where the government is doing something more efficiently than the private sector. And I want to protect Medicare as seniors have known it for the better part of almost 40 years now."
Energy bill
Now to the energy bill, which needs two more votes to overcome a filibuster being led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. Six Republicans opposed the bill last week, but they're not expected to change their votes. Instead, Republicans are trying to win over a couple of Democrats. If Republicans get the votes, they'll try again to pass the bill. If not, they'll go home and blame the Democrats for obstructing it (even though if all Republicans had voted for the bill it would have passed).
• Also today, former RNC Chairman Marc Racicot, the chairman of Bush-Cheney Inc., will travel to New Hampshire to announce the state's campaign steering committee. The committee will be headed by Gov. Craig Benson and Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu.
