Party Time

Republican candidates are running away from President Bush like he was a wet dog at a wedding.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Mark Kennedy (Minn.) and Sen. James M. Talent (Mo.) are known as loyal Republican soldiers, reliable votes for President Bush on tax cuts and the Iraq war. In elections past, they have aired advertisements featuring the president and have stumped with him at public rallies.

This year, both are running for Senate seats, but their television ads have made no mention of Bush -- and have been conspicuous in distancing the candidates from their partisan affiliation. "Most people don't care if you're red or blue, Republican or Democrat," Talent's ad states. A recent ad from Kennedy says, "He doesn't do what the party says to."

[...]

Steven S. Smith, a political scientist and congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said he believes that the new Kennedy and Talent ads are harbingers of what to expect from other GOP incumbents in tough races, such as Sens. Mike DeWine (Ohio) and Conrad Burns (Mont.). Their strategy, he said, is "to try to inoculate themselves against the inevitable series of ads from their opponent charging them with being Bushies."

"All these guys are trying to seem like reasonable, moderate guys who are not the scary conservatives who their opponents will make them out to be," Smith added. "But they all have very conservative records and support for the president that will make it difficult for them to duck this."

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GOP strategists, however, say there is little question that candidates are looking to draw distinctions between themselves and Bush, emphasizing their independence on issues such as embryonic stem cell research and immigration. "In the last two elections, you were able to run under President Bush and that was an advantage," said one top GOP strategist, who insisted on anonymity so as not to be seen as critical of the president. "It's clear today that's unlikely to be the advantage that it was in the past. A lot of candidates are trying to figure out how to deal with that."

It sounds like the best campaign slogan a Democrat could come up with is "My opponent is a loyal supporter of the president and everything he stands for."

Meanwhile, here in Florida we had another episode of "How weird can the Harris campaign get?"

Eliciting silence and nervous chuckles from a Republican crowd, U.S. Senate candidate LeRoy Collins Jr. asked Katherine Harris at a candidates' forum Friday to do what other party leaders have already requested of her: Drop out of the race for everyone's benefit.

"The notoriety that she's gotten for our party, in my opinion, has infected us all," said Collins, referring to a federal investigation tied to a contributor to Harris' campaign, which has weathered months of bad press.

Harris, her smile frozen, ignored Collins' request at the time, later calling it "a good press gimmick" by a "single-digits" candidate calling "on the front-runner to leave."

A new Miami Herald poll shows both candidates might be right: 35 percent of likely Republican primary voters favor Harris over her three Republican opponents -- Collins, Will McBride and Peter Monroe -- who are all stuck in the single digits. McBride leads the pack of lesser-knowns with 9 percent of the vote.

Such bravado doesn't mean, however, that there aren't some sketchy characters working for the Harris campaign and who like to make the debate a little more bizarre -- if that's possible.

Ducking questions about whether she would appear in a full debate, Harris earned the most applause after stressing her anti-abortion views. Collins, a former Navy admiral and namesake of Florida's Civil Rights-era governor, was the only one to suggest he was uncomfortable with a ban on abortion in the first two trimesters because accidental pregnancies, such as by rape, happen.

Like Harris, Collins said he takes "a very hard stance" against illegal immigrants. McBride, the only Hispanic in the race and an attorney who has done pro-bono immigration work, said he doesn't favor blanket amnesty or mass deportation. A woman in the crowd suggested otherwise when she held up a picture of McBride marching with an immigrants-rights group in Fort Myers.

Then came a question from Harris supporter Jackie Brownhill, who asked: "Why did you change your name from Rodriguez to McBride?"

McBride, who hadn't changed his name, was stunned.

"Well, I have to tell you, that's the first time I've heard that," he said. 'They're saying, 'You're Hispanic. You're pro-amnesty. You're pro-illegal immigration.' That's not the truth. The truth is, I can't help it if I have two Hispanic grandmothers and two Caucasian grandfathers. I'm not ashamed of who I am."

After the debate, McBride asked Brownhill, wearing a Harris sticker, where she got her information and she said: "The campaign asked me to ask you." Harris said her campaign didn't plant the question.

Anything else we can do to supply the Daily Show with free clips?