Hitler enters the presidential race
Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 8:46 am
This is just odd.
More info here.Bush campaign Web spot uses footage of Hitler
Video interspersing clips of Kerry, Dean, Gore with dictator's image sent to 6 million.
Associated Press
June 27, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Adolf Hitler's image has surfaced again in the White House race.
President Bush's campaign contains online video, removed from a liberal group's Web site months ago and disavowed, that features the Nazi dictator.
The Bush Internet video, which was sent electronically to 6 million supporters, intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry, Al Gore and Howard Dean with the footage of Hitler.
Democrats want the video pulled from the site. Campaign aides said it would remain.
Republicans criticized the group MoveOn.org in January because it briefly posted an ad contest entry that linked Hitler and Bush. It showed images of Bush with text saying, "God told me to strike at al-Qaida," before turning to images of Hitler with the words, "And then He instructed me to strike at Saddam." The submission ended with the words, "Sound familiar?" on a black and white screen.
The group later said the entry was in "poor taste" and pulled it from its site.
The 77-second video on the Bush-Cheney re-election site splices footage of Kerry, the presumptive nominee, and his 2004 rival Dean, along with 2000 nominee Gore and film director Michael Moore, all bashing Bush. The spot calls them Kerry's "Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Clips of Hitler's image are seen throughout the spot.
"We're using the video from MoveOn.org to show our supporters the type of vitriolic rhetoric being used by the president's opponents and John Kerry's surrogates," said Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
A disclaimer was added to the beginning of the Web spot Saturday afternoon to explain that the video contains "remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry supporters." The disclaimer also accuses Kerry of failing to denounce those who have compared Hitler to Bush.
I don't really see how this campaign is helping, well, anyone.Hitler being used in anti-Bush campaign
By JANINE ZACHARIA
WASHINGTON
Adolf Hitler has turned up in the US presidential race.
On Friday, the campaign of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, US Senator John Kerry, lambasted US President George W. Bush for incorporating into an anti-Kerry campaign video portions of an ad posted by a liberal advocacy group, which likened Bush to Hitler.
The Bush-Hitler comparison was part of an ad posted months ago on the website Moveon.org, an internet advocacy group, which is not affiliated with Kerry but is working for his election. Moveon.org held a contest for advertisements about Bush and posted many of them on the website, including the Bush-Hitler ad.
The Bush campaign video, being broadcast on its website, www.GeorgeWBush.com, is entitled the "Coalition of the Wild-Eyed." It strings together clips of an angry Vice President Al Gore screaming, "How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison." Kerry is shown using an expletive.
Former Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean shouts, "I want my country back."
Hitler images are interspersed twice. Third Reich war crimes are likened to Bush's foreign policy.
At the end of the video, a graphic reads, "It's a time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress."
A Kerry spokesman called on the Bush campaign to immediately remove the Hitler images from its website and apologize for using them. "The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong," Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said in a statement.
Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman, in response, said he agreed with that assessment.
"These ads, like much of the hate-filled, angry rhetoric of Kerry's coalition of the Wild-eyed, are disgusting," Mehlman said in a statement.
The statement listed comments by Kerry supporters, which he said Kerry should have spoken out against.
Mehlman wrote: "Why has John Kerry not denounced billionaire and Democrat(ic) Party donor George Soros for comparing the Bush administration to Nazis. Soros stated, 'When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' It reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ('The enemy is listening')."