Word: opportunists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...events of August suggested that Kerry's team was not yet quick or smart enough. Unlike in February, when Kerry was less well known, by August the Bush team had constructed a cartoon narrative of Kerry as a phony, unprincipled opportunist. When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched its ads claiming that Kerry had embellished his war record, the accusations fell on fertile soil. Quite apart from Red America, in the purple enclaves of Missouri and Ohio, there were plenty of voters who would hear the charges on cable or online and believe there was something to them. Only...
Courageous visionary or cornered opportunist? Confident democrat or hypocritical gambler? Tony Blair may qualify for all these titles thanks to his abrupt, massive and raggedly executed U-turn last week. After months of deriding a referendum on the proposed European Union constitution as a "gross and irresponsible betrayal of the true British national interest," he endorsed the idea after all. The normally dour Conservative leader, Michael Howard, was gleeful as he mocked Blair's pirouette during a House of Commons debate. "Six months ago, the Prime Minister stood before his party conference and said, with all the lip-quivering intensity...
...mission has been more urgent for the Bush-Cheney operation than to seize this moment, in the springtime of the campaign, when all impressions about the challenger are new, to convince voters that John Kerry is an opportunist tethered to no core beliefs, a serial side switcher on everything from the war to gas taxes to gay marriage. "Indecision kills," says Vice President Dick Cheney in his stump speech, with characteristic subtlety. "These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another thing the next." The President himself has leveled...
...last week, Republican panelist James Thompson abruptly challenged him to reconcile his damning book with a contradictory pro--Bush Administration statement. "We have your book, and we have your press briefing ... Which is true?" Is Clarke, terrorism czar for the past two Administrations, a truth teller or a lying opportunist...
...with kings and prime ministers and experts of all stripes. But as he speaks, Kerry heats up, grows loud, almost angry. His message shifts: Don't for a moment think all that worldliness means he has no convictions. Or that he is weak or a waffler or a political opportunist...