posted on September 16, 2004 11:20:47 AM new
Kerry Drops Ball With Packers Fans
Tue Sep 14,11:47 PM ET Add Politics - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!
By Jim VandeHei, Washington Post Staff Writer
MILWAUKEE, Sept. 14 -- Forget soccer moms and NASCAR (news - web sites) dads. The most important demographic in these parts transcends gender and geography -- it's Green Bay Packers fans.
Both candidates are targeting them with the ferocity of a Brett Favre bullet, but only John F. Kerry has fumbled the name of the hallowed grounds on which the Packers play, the frozen tundra of Curly Lambeau Field.
At a campaign event last month, the Democratic presidential nominee called it Lambert Field -- a slip of the tongue carried on television, in papers throughout the state and on ESPN's Web site.
That's akin to call the Yankees the Yankers or the Chicago Bulls the Bells. This is a place where Packers jackets often outnumber sports coats in church and thousands of fans wear a big chunk of yellow foam cheese atop their head with the pride of a new parent. President Bush (news - web sites)'s warning to terrorists is apropos to the passions of Packers fans -- you are either with 'em or against 'em.
"I got some advice for him," Bush told Wisconsinites a few days after the Lambert gaffe. "If someone offers you a cheesehead, don't say you want some wine, just put it on your head and take a seat at Lambeau Field." Vice President Cheney made the obligatory pilgrimage to Green Bay last week to pile on. "I thought after John Kerry (news - web sites)'s visit here I'd visit Lambert Field," Cheney told a crowd at a Republican fundraising dinner Thursday night. Then he went in for the kill. "The next thing is he'll be convinced Vince Lombardi is a foreign leader."
Perhaps Lombardi, the Hall of Fame coach who put Titletown on the map in the 1960s, is working from the beyond the grave to trip up the Massachusetts senator. After all, Richard M. Nixon considered Lombardi as his running mate in 1968. There's one problem with this: Lombardi was a Kennedy Democrat. In fact, the Kennedys' connection to the Green and Gold runs even deeper. In 1955, Packers Coach Lisle Blackbourn flirted with a talented young pro prospect in Massachusetts: Ted Kennedy, who now plays offensive line for the Kerry campaign.
Still, it might take more than the Kennedy mystique to put the "Lambert" moment behind Kerry -- a moment Kerry aides call a slip of the tongue. The Bush campaign is planning to rehash the comment until Election Day as a way of portraying Kerry as detached from the beer-drinking, bratwurst-eating folks of Wisconsin. College Republicans in Madison, where Kerry will visit Wednesday, are planning to greet him with a new sign: "It's Lambeau, Stupid!"
"He tries [too] hard to fit in with Wisconsinites, and he fumbles every time," said Jennifer Millerwise, a Bush campaign spokeswoman. "He should stick to windsurfing analogies -- only problem for Senator Kerry is that most people watch the Packers on Sunday."
This strategy is not confined to Cheeseland either. Republicans poked fun of Kerry for talking about the Buckeyes (of Ohio State University) while visiting arch rival Michigan (home of the Wolverines). These seemingly innocuous digs fit into a larger Bush-Cheney plan of fashioning the president as a common man and Kerry as a pandering patrician.
Kerry's slip is rookie stuff compared with Bush's verbal blunders, including his famous creation of the word "misunderestimated."
And David Wade, a Kerry spokesman, said Packers fans will see the failed "playbook" of the Republicans. "Any Packers fan knows . . . Bush has fumbled on Iraq (news - web sites), did a double reverse on the assault weapons ban and dropped the ball on health care." Then Wade went personal. "I don't think we need any lectures in sports from a former cheerleader," referring to one of Bush's activities while at prep school.
So, could a candidate lose the state by tripping over the name of a stadium? Probably not, though Al Gore (news - web sites) won Wisconsin by only a few thousand votes in 2000 and small shifts can make a big difference in this battleground state this year, state political observers say. "It sort of plays into the perception, right or wrong, that people think John Kerry is an opportunist who when he is not out windsurfing comes in to try to be a regular guy," said Ken Goldstein, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. The latest polls show Kerry down eight points; he was tied in most polls before the gaffe.
Cheney, by comparison, hit all the right notes when he visited Green Bay last week, according to local papers. Not only did he speak to the biggest issue in the state -- the Packers -- he did so with Bart Starr, the Hall of Fame quarterback, by his side. "I've never been around someone I was more impressed with," Starr said of Cheney. The QB and VP also visited the Packers Hall of Fame, footsteps from the stadium.
In a campaign stop here Tuesday, Kerry looked to regain his footing. Speaking to a small group of seniors, nine hours after the Packers defeated the National Football Conference champion Carolina Panthers, 24-14, Kerry said he "got in town last night in time to watch the Pack," though he landed well into the third quarter. It was among his biggest applause lines. "So I know you would all be in a good mood today."
In the end, it's the Packers' score -- more than the Packers vote -- that could determine Kerry's fate. In the past 18 presidential elections, if the Redskins lost or tied the last game before the election, the party in the White House lost, too. The Redskins' opponent Oct. 31: the Packers, but not at Lambert, er, Lambeau Field.
posted on September 16, 2004 12:23:49 PM new
logansdad you are way off base. What this thread was addressing the votes kerry needs to win wisconsin and if doesn't know the name of the Packers Stadium then I hope he is toast. It was a state Gore won and now Bush is leading by 6% points.
George Bush Sr. has nothing to do with this.. Just goes to show how some people read threads.
posted on September 16, 2004 12:31:58 PM new
Amazing. Republicans didn't mind at all that Bush didn't know the heads of foreign governments when he was elected or that he can't open his mouth now without putting his foot in it. But Kerry flubs the name of a football stadium and that's of major consequence...
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"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on September 16, 2004 12:43:05 PM new
Libra: logansdad you are way off base. What this thread was addressing the votes kerry needs to win wisconsin and if doesn't know the name of the Packers Stadium then I hope he is toast. It was a state Gore won and now Bush is leading by 6% points.
I guess you are more concerned about the name of a stupid football field and your football team than you are about the person's policies and platform. I don't think Kerry's goof about the name of the football stadium is why Bush is ahead in Wisconsin.
I mentioned Bush's senior remarkes because it was more a goof than what Kerry made. That would be like anyone today saying the terrorists attacked on November 11, 2001.
DICK CHENEY SUPPORTS MY RELATIONSHIP: People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
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YOU CAN'T HAVE BULLSH** WITH OUT BUSH.
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posted on September 16, 2004 12:55:19 PM new
Actually, Bush Sr.'s biggest flub was when he vomited in the lap of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa while on a state visit to Japan...
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on September 16, 2004 12:59:57 PM newActually, Bush Sr.'s biggest flub was when he vomited in the lap of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa while on a state visit to Japan...
I do remember that as well, but I guess that could happen to anyone. I wonder if Bush Jr will repeat the scene but with it being an Iraqi official.
DICK CHENEY SUPPORTS MY RELATIONSHIP: People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
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YOU CAN'T HAVE BULLSH** WITH OUT BUSH.
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posted on September 16, 2004 01:58:09 PM new
Libra - I love the Packers. I love Packer fans. Personally I believe that being a Packer fan shows a level of intelligence and common sence that does not quite jibe with your assertation that people might actually decide the leader of their country based on the knowledge, or lack thereof, of the name of a football stadium. I admit that I have never been to Wisconsin but is that really how you and your neighbors decide who their choice for leader of the free world should be?
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on September 16, 2004 07:20:29 PM new
I agree who gives a rats ass about wisconsin football.....I live in PA, so the only football stadiums I know is beaver and heinz field.
Blairwitch: "I agree who gives a rats ass about wisconsin football" Well the people in Wisconsin do and it is a key state. You know the candidate Kerry professes to know football, he showed how much he did know and he was a bust. He or someone from his campaign is in Wisconsin every week. So it must be important.
Logansdad: "I guess you are more concerned about the name of a stupid football field and your football team than you are about the person's policies and platform"
Just what are his policies and his platform. He has really never stated any except to say I am going to give millions of dollars to what ever state he is in that will benefit him.
Has he said how he is going to creat millions of jobs, lower health care, give 600 million to national parks. lower prescription drugs, fund after school programs and that is just a short list.
No fenix they don't but after his vist here Bush was up 6% points. Wisconsin voted democrat last election and they (democrats) had only won by 6,000 votes. Now Kerry has to rethink how is he going to get his votes back. Making the blunder didn't help any.
It just showed his intellengence for football.
posted on September 17, 2004 07:57:46 AM new
Anyone who votes on the issue of a football stadium is three quarters retarded to begin with.......its just silly.
Prevent Bigotry through Education.
