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American Morning
Interview with RNC Chairman
Aired February 23, 2004 - 08:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Politics now. Ralph Nader says both the Republican and Democratic Parties have failed the country. So the consumer advocate has launched a third party campaign for the presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RALPH NADER, INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's a question between both parties flunking, Tim, one with a D minus, the Republicans; one with a D plus, the Democrats. And it's time to change the equation and bring millions of American people into the political arena.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Democrats are loudly complaining that Nader will hurt their chance to defeat President Bush. But Nader says he expects to draw more voters away from Mr. Bush than the Democratic nominee.
Joining us this morning from Washington, D.C. to talk about that, as well as a shift in the president's reelection strategy, is Ed Gillespie. He's the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Nice to see you, Ed.
Thanks for being with us.
ED GILLESPIE, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Good morning, Soledad.
Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
Ralph Nader, many people said that his showing in 2000 undermined to a great degree how Al Gore did in New Hampshire and also in Florida.
Are you and other members in the Republican National Committee just absolutely thrilled the Ralph Nader has decided to throw his hat back in the ring?
GILLESPIE: Well, the fact is, Soledad, we never anticipated him being in and it doesn't really make a difference to us. The fact is we're going to focus on the president's strong and principled leadership, his positive agenda for a second term, the benefits of his policies that we're seeing today and the results that we're seeing in the economy and in the war against terrorism. And that's where we're going to make the case. And President Bush is going to be reelected if, rather, Ralph Nader runs or not, or regardless of who emerges as the Democratic nominee and regardless of how many other third party or independent candidates run for president this year.
O'BRIEN: Well, it sounds like you're telling me that Ralph Nader's entry into the race doesn't change the Republican strategy at all.
Is that right?
GILLESPIE: That's correct, it doesn't.
O'BRIEN: Interesting.
All right, well, we hear that President Bush is going to be giving a highly political speech. That's going to happen tonight. Also, you all are going to unveil a television campaign ad on March 4. Many people had said well, I thought they were going to wait until there was actually a named Democratic nominee to be running against.
Is this an indication that there's some major concern here on the part of the White House?
GILLESPIE: Well, I -- it's not an indication of a major concern. There is a little bit of a tactical shift in terms of speeding up some of the surrogate operations and some of those things in terms of messaging. Look, the fact is, Democrats have run, in the course of this campaign, $17 million in attack ads against the president. The lion's share of the advertising run in the Democratic primaries has been directed at the president, not at one another. When you add the outside groups, third party groups like Moveon.org and their $12.2 million, it's over $29 million that's been spent so far attacking the president.
So I think it is important that we get the president's message out. They've been distorting his record, distorting their own positions and we need to set the record straight. And I think the time has come for that.
O'BRIEN: I want to ask you about some numbers. Here's what a "Newsweek" poll had to say. In a hypothetical match up between Senator Kerry and President Bush, Senator Kerry would get 48 percent of the vote, President Bush would get 45 percent; Senator Edwards 46 percent, equal to President Bush at 46 percent. Right now, also, the president's approval number is 48 percent. "Newsweek" is calling that the lowest ever.
How concerned are you and others about these numbers?
GILLESPIE: Well, you'd always rather be up than down in these snapshot surveys. But we anticipated this a long time ago. In fact, we figured that by the time, right around the time the Democratic nominating process began to wrap up that the president would be down in the polls and, in fact, projected that back when he was beating all comers by 20 points before they started running all this advertising and engaging in all of the negative attacks against him.
So we're not surprised by this and the fact is once we begin to get to talk about the big choices that are being presented, talk about the record of, for example, Senator Kerry, who has opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, is opposed to the action to remove Saddam Hussein today, voted against the weapons systems necessary to win the war against terror -- if his policies were in place, Saddam Hussein would not only be in Baghdad today, he'd still be in Kuwait and we would not be waging an aggressive war against terror. We'd be going back to a time of treating terrorist acts as matters of law enforcement, as he says.
I think those bright choices, raising taxes at a time we're trying to increase jobs in our economy versus making the tax relief permanent and passing a progress agenda, once those choices come into focus, I feel good about where we're going to end yup in November.
O'BRIEN: Ed Gillespie, as always, nice to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
GILLESPIE: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired February 23, 2004 - 08:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Politics now. Ralph Nader says both the Republican and Democratic Parties have failed the country. So the consumer advocate has launched a third party campaign for the presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RALPH NADER, INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's a question between both parties flunking, Tim, one with a D minus, the Republicans; one with a D plus, the Democrats. And it's time to change the equation and bring millions of American people into the political arena.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Democrats are loudly complaining that Nader will hurt their chance to defeat President Bush. But Nader says he expects to draw more voters away from Mr. Bush than the Democratic nominee.
Joining us this morning from Washington, D.C. to talk about that, as well as a shift in the president's reelection strategy, is Ed Gillespie. He's the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Nice to see you, Ed.
Thanks for being with us.
ED GILLESPIE, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Good morning, Soledad.
Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
Ralph Nader, many people said that his showing in 2000 undermined to a great degree how Al Gore did in New Hampshire and also in Florida.
Are you and other members in the Republican National Committee just absolutely thrilled the Ralph Nader has decided to throw his hat back in the ring?
GILLESPIE: Well, the fact is, Soledad, we never anticipated him being in and it doesn't really make a difference to us. The fact is we're going to focus on the president's strong and principled leadership, his positive agenda for a second term, the benefits of his policies that we're seeing today and the results that we're seeing in the economy and in the war against terrorism. And that's where we're going to make the case. And President Bush is going to be reelected if, rather, Ralph Nader runs or not, or regardless of who emerges as the Democratic nominee and regardless of how many other third party or independent candidates run for president this year.
O'BRIEN: Well, it sounds like you're telling me that Ralph Nader's entry into the race doesn't change the Republican strategy at all.
Is that right?
GILLESPIE: That's correct, it doesn't.
O'BRIEN: Interesting.
All right, well, we hear that President Bush is going to be giving a highly political speech. That's going to happen tonight. Also, you all are going to unveil a television campaign ad on March 4. Many people had said well, I thought they were going to wait until there was actually a named Democratic nominee to be running against.
Is this an indication that there's some major concern here on the part of the White House?
GILLESPIE: Well, I -- it's not an indication of a major concern. There is a little bit of a tactical shift in terms of speeding up some of the surrogate operations and some of those things in terms of messaging. Look, the fact is, Democrats have run, in the course of this campaign, $17 million in attack ads against the president. The lion's share of the advertising run in the Democratic primaries has been directed at the president, not at one another. When you add the outside groups, third party groups like Moveon.org and their $12.2 million, it's over $29 million that's been spent so far attacking the president.
So I think it is important that we get the president's message out. They've been distorting his record, distorting their own positions and we need to set the record straight. And I think the time has come for that.
O'BRIEN: I want to ask you about some numbers. Here's what a "Newsweek" poll had to say. In a hypothetical match up between Senator Kerry and President Bush, Senator Kerry would get 48 percent of the vote, President Bush would get 45 percent; Senator Edwards 46 percent, equal to President Bush at 46 percent. Right now, also, the president's approval number is 48 percent. "Newsweek" is calling that the lowest ever.
How concerned are you and others about these numbers?
GILLESPIE: Well, you'd always rather be up than down in these snapshot surveys. But we anticipated this a long time ago. In fact, we figured that by the time, right around the time the Democratic nominating process began to wrap up that the president would be down in the polls and, in fact, projected that back when he was beating all comers by 20 points before they started running all this advertising and engaging in all of the negative attacks against him.
So we're not surprised by this and the fact is once we begin to get to talk about the big choices that are being presented, talk about the record of, for example, Senator Kerry, who has opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, is opposed to the action to remove Saddam Hussein today, voted against the weapons systems necessary to win the war against terror -- if his policies were in place, Saddam Hussein would not only be in Baghdad today, he'd still be in Kuwait and we would not be waging an aggressive war against terror. We'd be going back to a time of treating terrorist acts as matters of law enforcement, as he says.
I think those bright choices, raising taxes at a time we're trying to increase jobs in our economy versus making the tax relief permanent and passing a progress agenda, once those choices come into focus, I feel good about where we're going to end yup in November.
O'BRIEN: Ed Gillespie, as always, nice to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
GILLESPIE: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
