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Iowa 2004 presidential primary precinct caucus and caucuses news, reports
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Iowa
Presidential Watch's
The
Bush Beat
Holding
the Democrats accountable today, tomorrow...forever. |
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 George
W. Bush
excerpts
from
the Iowa Daily Report
January 16-31,
2004
Elections now
Iraq's most revered Shi'ite
cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has refused to
support the U.S. plan for regional caucuses to
select a transitional assembly which will pick an
interim government to take sovereignty by the end
of June.
Paul Bremer continues to meet
with President Bush in Washington trying to work
through the Shi’ite Muslims objections to
caucusing first in setting up a new controlling
government for Iraq.
If (Sistani) issues a fatwa
(edict) all the Iraqi people will go out in
protest marches and demonstrations against the
coalition forces," Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri
said. (1/16/2004)
Bush in Atlanta
President Bush proclaimed Martin
Luther King’s Holiday today stating, “all
Americans benefit from Dr. King's work and his
legacy of courage, dignity, and moral clarity."
However, while joining King’s family laying a
wreath on King’s graveside, protesters booed the
President and protested his visit.
Bush received a warmer welcome
from Georgia’s Democrat Senator Zell Miller, who
has publically supported Bush’s re-election. Bush
also raised $1.3 million in Georgia and $1 million
in New Orleans in his two-state swing for his
reelection efforts.
President Bush announced new
rules while in Georgia that help "faith-based"
charities compete for $3.7 billion in Justice
Department funding. (1/16/2004)
State of the Union
President Bush will try to
revive a proposal that would allow younger workers
to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes
in the stock market, aides say; make
already-enacted tax cuts permanent, such as the
elimination of inheritances taxes and reductions
in capital gains taxes; push for a new kind of
tax-preferred savings accounts that could be used
for retirement, college, health care or other
purposes. (1/16/2004)
-
“… if the economy
continues to improve and Iraq stabilizes, "it
almost doesn't matter who our candidate is -- it's
going to be very hard for our side to win,"
said Democrat
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell.
-
“Rudy Giuliani will be
out in Iowa on Monday speaking to first responders
who know firsthand how hard President Bush
continues to work to keep our country safe and
secure,"
said
Giuliani's spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel.
(1/16/2004)
Democrats behind in fund-raising
The
Associated press reports the Democrat National
Committee is not doing well compared to the
Republicans in fundraising:
With
$33.1 million in the bank and more to come, the
RNC is laying plans to spend in races up and down
the ticket as the Democratic National Committee
works to complete its first task: raising $16
million to help promote its presidential nominee.
The
parties' finances as the year began offer a
striking look at the effect broad new fund-raising
restrictions are having. The DNC started with $10
million in the bank, one-third as much as the RNC.
(1/16/2004)
Tax Cuts work
President Bush in his weekly
radio address stated that tax cuts work:
"Tax
relief has helped turn our economy around," Bush
said. "Our economy grew at its fastest pace in two
decades in the third quarter of 2003.
Manufacturers are seeing a rebound in new orders
in factory activity. More than a quarter-million
new jobs have been created since August."
(1/17/2004)
Pickering in
In what many felt was a move to
shore up his conservative base, President Bush
used a recess appointment of Charles Pickering to
the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The 5th
Circuit handles appeals from Mississippi, Texas
and Louisiana, and the judges on that circuit have
been trailblazers on desegregation and voting
rights in the past. (1/17/2004)
Healthcare
The
New York Times reports Bush "is expected to
propose a healthcare initiative in his State of
the Union address to help the uninsured and the
underinsured, White House advisers said on Friday.
It was unclear how much the initiative... would
cost at a time when Mr. Bush is under pressure
because of a growing budget deficit. But White
House officials have made clear that they do not
want to cede the politically potent issue of
health care to the Democratic presidential
candidates, all of whom have made health care a
centerpiece of their campaigns." (1/17/2004)
Slipping
President Bush slipped to 45
percent among independent voters down from 62
percent in December. In the poll, 43 percent of
all those polled said the war in Iraq was worth
the costs and 51 percent said it was not. Bush’s
overall job rating by all voters was at 50
percent. In addition to the changing attitudes on
Iraq Bush’s new proposals on immigration and going
to the Moon received unfavorable ratings by the
public as well.
Tuesday night the President will
deliver his State of the Union Address. It will be
interesting to see if he gets the usual boost
following the speech. In his address to Congress
and the nation Tuesday night, Bush plans to
announce at least $120 million in grants,
administered by the Labor Department to enhance
work force training programs at community
colleges. He is also reportedly going to encourage
nanotechnology. (1/19/2004)
Cheney unholstered
Vice President Dick Cheney’s gun
is coming out of the holster and getting into the
fight. The LA Times
and
USA Today report:
"Cheney is emerging to take on an increasingly
public role - partly as emissary to the party's
conservative base and partly to argue before a
wider audience that the Bush administration has
the wisdom and experience to navigate an
increasingly dangerous world."
Cheney
said that it was his last campaign.
(1/19/2004)
-
"I knew that time would
pass and people would take the comfortable
position of saying the dangers have passed,"
President Bush
said. "That's just not reality. My job as
your president is to be realistic, be open-eyed,
to understand the lessons of September the 11; to
understand that there's still terrorists who plot
against us."
-
"My God, to suggest that
responsible people, the president of the United
States, would have known about that before the
fact and not done anything about it, it is just,
it's just, it's awful,"
Sec. Of State
Colin Powell said about Howard Dean’s accusation
that Bush knew about 9-11 in advance. "It's
outrageous."
-
"For a guy who says, 'Aw
shucks, I'll just go to New Hampshire and see how
things turn out,' he's spending a heck of a lot of
money," said a
strategist for President Bush. "He's
spending to win in New Hampshire, not to just sort
of show up and see how he does."
(1/23/2004)
Bush going to NH
President Bush will travel to
New Hampshire Jan. 29, two days after the state’s
Democratic Presidential primary.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, New York Gov. George Pataki and Arizona
Sen. John McCain, who defeated Bush in the New
Hampshire primary in 2000, will make appearances
before voters go to the polls Tuesday.
Bush won the state in the 2000
general election. (1/23/2004)
Bush: 1% budget increase
The Washington Times reports
that President Bush will propose that non-homeland
security part of the budget be raised 1 percent
while homeland security would rise 9.7 percent
under his budget plan:
President Bush will propose an increase of less
than 1 percent for federal programs not related to
defense or homeland security, effectively freezing
discretionary spending in the next budget, after
coming under fire from conservatives to control
runaway spending.
But
the president will propose increasing
governmentwide homeland security funding by 9.7
percent in the fiscal 2005 budget, and the
military budget is expected to increase by a small
amount.
"This
is going to be an austere budget," White House
spokesman Trent Duffy said of the budget that Mr.
Bush will send to Congress on Feb. 2. (1/23/2004)
Force necessary
Vice President Dick Cheney
speaking in Davos, Switzerland said, “Free
nations, working together, must not shy from using
force if diplomacy cannot deter terrorism and
check the spread of the world's most dangerous
weapons.”
Cheney offered even more serious
reproaches to the European nations, according to
the
Associated Press:
"Europeans know that their great experiment in
building peace, unity and prosperity cannot
survive as a privileged enclave, surrounded on its
outskirts by breeding grounds of hatred and
fanaticism," Cheney said.
"The
days of looking the other way while despotic
regimes trample human rights, rob their nations'
wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding
their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred
are over." (1/24/2004)
Those independent women
British Prime Minister Tony
Blair is undergoing a bit of 10 Downing Street
dissension. It seems his wife is quoted in a new
book expressing a feeling that parallels most
Democrats. She feels that President Bush stole the
election, according to the Times of India:
She
believed Al Gore had been "robbed" of the
presidency and was hostile to the idea of her
husband "cozying" up to the new President.
Even
as they flew to Washington for their first meeting
with the presidential couple, Mrs Blair was in no
mood to curry favour, the book stated.
The
book's disclosures of Mrs Blair's forthright views
will cause embarrassment in Downing Street,
because of Blair's good working relations with
Bush, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
although they will not surprise officials or
ministers who know her well.
(1/24/2004)
New Hampshire visit
Sen. John McCain is in New
Hampshire for a Merrimack Diner at 3:30 pm, a tour
of Radio Row at the Center of New Hampshire
Holiday Inn at 4:35 pm, and a 5:10 pm trip on the
Bush campaign bus to a 6:15 pm rally in Nashua
with Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot.
McCain beat Bush in New Hampshire four years ago.
Now, Bush asked McCain to help out.
(1/26/2004)
No Kentucky visit
Roll Call reports President Bush
will not visit Kentucky's 6th Congressional
District on behalf of the GOP candidate in the
February 17 special election. The race is expected
to be tight, with Democrats having a slight edge.
"Democrats believe that Bush's decision signals a
fear among his campaign operatives that if [GOP
candidate Alice Forgy] Kerr loses the race it
could reflect poorly on him as he begins to rev up
his re-election campaign. One senior Kentucky
Republican said that Bush's decision had nothing
to do with the potentially negative association if
Kerr lost but rather was based on an inability by
the Kerr campaign to pay the entire bill for the
various overhead costs of a presidential visit."
(1/26/2004)
Weapons of Mass Destruction
David Kay is testifying and
President Bush continues to be questioned about
WMDs:
When asked Tuesday by reporters
about Kay's assertions, Bush didn't say that the
banned weapons would eventually be discovered: "We
know from years of intelligence — not only our own
intelligence services, but other intelligence
gathering organizations — that he had weapons —
after all, he used them." (1/28/2004)
-
"I have every belief that
some of these weapons could be found as we move
forward," Iraqi
foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari said , an Iraqi
Kurd, told a news conference in Sofia.
"They have been hidden in certain areas. The
system of hiding was very sophisticated."
-
"When we see suffering,
and tyranny, and starvation and brutalization this
nation will act,"
President Bush
said. "We've made some tough choices
recently but all these choices are aimed at one
thing, to make America more secure, the world more
free, and the world more peaceful."
-
"Nobody will want to know
better and more about what we found when we got to
Iraq than this president and the administration,"
National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said.
(1/29/2004)
WMD investigation
Reuters reports on the Bush
administration trying to stave off new independent
investigations concerning weapons of mass
destruction used in calling for going to war
against Iraq:
The administration sought to put
the blame for any intelligence gaps on looters and
former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said
was so secretive that "he allowed the world to
continue to wonder" what weapons he still had.
Rice told NBC that the
intelligence community had already launched its
own investigation -- "a kind of audit of what was
known going in and what was found when they got
there."
"The judgment is going to be the
same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part
of the world and it was time to do something about
this threat," she said.
(1/29/2004)
Are they angry?
Bush-Cheney 04 chief strategist
Matt Dowd's latest memo, "Political Perspective
Post-New Hampshire, writes about the results of
Republicans voting in the Democrat New Hampshire
Primary
"The notion that 'so many'
Republicans voted in the Democratic primary this
year, that their 'enthusiasm' on primary day
showed how angry they are at President Bush and
that this will 'spell trouble' in November is flat
wrong. The facts from Tuesday's exit polls provide
some objectivity: a higher percentage of Democrats
voted in the Republican primary in 2000 (4%), than
Republicans voted in the Democratic primary this
year (3%). And in 2000, there was a seriously
contested Democratic primary between Gore and
Bradley to keep Democrats interested. More voters
cast ballots in the relatively uncontested
Republican primary this year than cast ballots in
the uncontested Republican primary in 1984 when
Reagan ran for re-election."
(1/29/2004)
Bush first to file with FEC
Today’s Washington Post reports
President Bush is the first presidential candidate
to file FEC papers for the final quarter of 2003.
Results show Bush campaign has spent $31.6 million
in calendar year 2003. The only other presidential
candidate to spend more is Howard Dean –
possibly. The Dean campaign refused to answer
questions regarding amounts spent this final
quarter. But it will all be told soon enough. FEC
filed quarterly reports are open to the public,
and all candidates must file their final quarterly
reports by tomorrow’s deadline. (1/30/2004)
Bush
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