GOP attacks Kerry

NEW YORK – Vice President Dick Cheney unleashed a stinging attack on Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday night, ridiculing him as a politician who has made a career out of changing his mind.

“More wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure,” agreed Sen. Zell Miller, a Democratic keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention.

“As a war protester, Kerry blamed our military,” said the Georgia senator in a fiery speech that drew repeated ovations from the GOP delegates in the hall. “As a senator, he voted to weaken our military.”

The vice president hailed President Bush as a “superb commander in chief” who has helped restore the economy since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and will lead the nation to victory in the war on terror. Bush “does not deal in empty threats and halfway measures,” Cheney said in a prime-time speech at the convention podium delivered to a nationwide television audience.

Republicans launched their double-barreled attack on Bush’s Democratic opponent as the president campaigned his way into the convention city, collecting the endorsement of the union representing New York’s 8,600 firefighters, some of whom risked their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. His eyes misted as he stood among them and held a black fire helmet labeled “Commander in Chief.”

“Four more years,” they shouted – echoing the chants that floated up from the convention floor several miles away as delegates acclaimed the Bush-Cheney ticket for another term.

The speeches by Cheney and Miller were the main events of the evening, but the convention seemed to move 20 years back in time at one point as delegates took in a tribute to the late Ronald Reagan. They cheered at video clips of the late president at his most forceful, then again when they saw former President George H.W. Bush eulogizing him in June. Madison Square Garden bloomed with thousands of blue placards that read “Win One for the Gipper.”

Cheney performed the traditional vice president’s role in his turn at the podium, praising the man at the top of the ticket while denigrating the leader of the political opposition. “Time and again, he has made the wrong call on national security,” the vice president said of Kerry.

“On Iraq, Sen. Kerry has disagreed with many of his fellow Democrats,” Cheney said in a delivery as understated as Miller’s was not. “But Sen. Kerry’s liveliest disagreement is with himself. His back and forth reflects a habit of indecision and sends a message of confusion.”

With two months remaining in a close election, and the pool of undecided voters a small one, Republicans relished the opportunity to place a Democrat out front at their convention. They had their man in Miller, a conservative ex-Marine who minces no words and delivered a keynote address a dozen years ago in the same hall in service of Democrat Bill Clinton.

“In this hour of danger, our president has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him,” the Georgia lawmaker said.

Outside the heavily defended hall, police watched warily as demonstrators waving pink slips formed a line three miles long in Manhattan to protest the Bush administration’s economic policies. Fewer than a dozen arrests were reported, one day after police took into custody more than 1,000 demonstrators who had threatened to march on the convention hall.

A small group of AIDS activists managed to penetrate Madison Square Garden itself during the morning, before the convention session had begun for the day. They blew whistles and chanted, “Bush kills” at a morning session of GOP youth before being hustled from the floor.

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