Kerry makes values appeal
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Everywhere he goes these days, Sen. John Kerry weaves the same words into his speeches: Responsibility. Values. Family. Service. Faith.
He almost sounds like a Republican.
Increasingly, the Massachusetts senator is adopting language associated with cultural conservatives to ground his campaign in the broad moral terms that swing voters find comforting. Strategists think talk about values helps Kerry explain who he is and provides immunity to the dreaded “Massachusetts liberal” label.
Everything from universal health care to military service is redefined as an all-American value.
“Values are not just talk. They’re what we live,” Kerry said Saturday in the weekly Democratic radio address. “They’re about the causes we champion and the people we fight for … What matters is not the narrow values that divide, but the shared values that have always united every American: faith and family, strength and service, responsibility and opportunity.”
The attempt to broaden Kerry’s reach began early in July on a swing through the Midwest. He visited dairy farms in Wisconsin – delivering paeans to the value of connection to the land – fired a shotgun on a trap-shooting range and said he represented “conservative values.” He even declared his belief that life begins at conception, though he supports the right to abortion.
For Kerry, “values” are bread-and-butter issues. He says it’s immoral to have 43 million people without access to health insurance, to shortchange education funding and to favor the wealthy with tax cuts while the middle class gets squeezed between stagnant wages and rising costs.
For President Bush and his Republican backers, the emphasis is on cultural and conservative values: opposition to abortion, protection of gun rights, strengthening the traditional family and opposing gay marriage. They point out that Kerry voted against reducing a disadvantage for some married couples that’s built into the tax code.
They say Kerry’s new values message is part of an “extreme makeover” meant to mask his liberal record and is part of his habit of straddling incompatible positions.
Bush mocked Kerry’s claim to the conservative label in a recent speech in Marquette, Mich.: “It’s kind of hard to square that with what he said when he said, ‘I’m a liberal and proud of it.’ ” At a rally in Pennsylvania’s Amish heartland, Bush said Kerry was “out of step with the mainstream values so important to our country and our families.”
An estimated one-fifth of voters say moral values are the most important factor on which they’ll base their decision this year, according to a recent survey by Democratic pollster Mark Penn.