NEW YORK (AP) — President Bush picked apart John Kerry’s record on the Iraq war and tax cuts Thursday night and summoned the nation toward victory over terrorism and economic security at home.
“Nothing will hold us back,” he said in a Republican National Convention acceptance speech that launched his fall re-election campaign. “We are staying on the offensive striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.”
Bush added, “And we will prevail.”
“Four more years, four more years,” the delegates chanted as Bush strode alone onto a podium in the middle of a heavily fortified convention hall. His introduction was a video that stirred memories of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and credited him with “the heart of a president.”
“I believe this nation wants steady, consistent, principled leadership, and that is why, with your help, we will win this election,” he said.
Bush’s speech marked the beginning of a two-month campaign sprint to Election Day, and Kerry clearly couldn’t wait. In a ferocious counterattack after a week of GOP convention-week criticism, he called the wartime commander-in-chief and Cheney unfit to lead the nation.
“I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who have refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq,” the junior senator from Massachusetts said in remarks prepared for a midnight campaign appearance in Ohio.
Bush said Kerry and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards had both voted against $87 billion in aid for “troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
The president also said Kerry has proposed “more than $2 trillion in new federal spending so far, and that’s a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts.”
Contrary to Bush’s characterization, Kerry’s economic plan calls for rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts only on the top 2 percent of wage-earners, while leaving the rest in effect.
The public opinion polls made the race a toss-up as Bush stepped to a custom-made, theater-in-the-round style podium at Madison Square Garden, the country divided along political lines that shaped the Electoral College strategy for him and Kerry alike.
In a return to the rhetoric of compassionate conservatism that marked his 2000 election campaign, the Republican pledged changes in health coverage, pensions and more. He renewed his call for an overhaul of Social Security that would allow individuals to invest some of their payroll taxes on their own.
Polls show the president receives high marks from voters for his leadership qualities and the job he has done fighting the war on terror, although his handling of the war in Iraq and the economy is more problematic.
Republicans neared the end of a four-day run as New York State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo ordered the city to release 470 protesters, some of whom have been in jail for nearly three days. The judge also fined the city $1,000 for every protester held past the deadline he set for their release. Authorities had blamed the sheer volume of detainees — more than 1,700 arrests have been made — for the slow pace of court processing.
