http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/2/21/154327.shtmlSwift Boat Advisers Back Bush S.S. Plan
The group of advisers who helped Swift Boat Veterans for Truth craft an effective campaign against Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election is now on board with President Bush's plan to reform Social Security.
The group, now called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, is widely credited with helping swing the election to Bush, though he never coordinated with the group and in fact criticized it at one time.
Now the New York Times reports that same winning team is back together, this time to help craft a strategy in support of Bush's Social Security initiative, which includes allowing younger workers to invest a portion of their contributions.
USA Next, a conservative lobbying organization whose president is Charlie Jarvis, deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, and whose national chairman is Art Linkletter, "has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security," the Times reported.
They include Chris LaCivita, a former U.S. Marine who advised the Swift Vets' media campaign and wrote its effective television commercials. Also, USA Next wants to hire Rick Reed, a partner at the law firm of Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which was retained by the Swift Vets for media production.
Finally, the Times reports, USA Next has retained Creative Response Concepts, "a Virginia firm that represented both Swift Vets ... and Regnery Publishing, the publisher of 'Unfit for Command,' a book about Senator John Kerry's military service whose co-author was John E. O'Neill, one of the primary leaders of Swift Vets."
Kerry, who was a Swift Boat commander for a short time during Vietnam, was attacked mercilessly by the Swift Vets group during last year's campaign. The group alleged - very effectively - that Kerry's Navy service and his decorations, including three Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in action, were exaggerated.
Armed with former Swift Vets advisers, USA Next will now take on perhaps an even toughest opponent: AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), which has so far put up the most resistance to Bush's plans to remake Social Security.
AARP is beginning to gear up its own public relations battle wagon, so far spending about $10 million on a print ad campaign, which will launch this week, and on print advertising in major newspapers, the Times reported. Said one ad, in opposing Bush's private accounts, "If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots."
But USA Next's strategy appears to be similar to the one used by the Swift Vets last year against Kerry, in that it seeks to attack its opponent's weak spot. In Kerry's case, it was his history; the same may be true for USA Next's AARP battle plan.
"USA Next has been portraying AARP as a liberal organization out of step with Republican values, and is now trying to discredit its stance on Social Security," the Times reported.
AARP, which bills itself as non-partisan, has given USA Next plenty of ammunition to use against it. Though the retired persons' organization sided with the administration in pushing for the new Medicare-based prescription drug benefit in 2003, based on its support of other policy issues, the group is fairly accurately judged by conservatives to be an opponent, not an ally.
Still, AARP's 35 million-member strength is formidable. Acknowledging that, USA Next's Jarvis says the group's planned frontal assault on behalf of Bush's Social Security reforms may again alienate the White House, since the entitlement has long been considered the "Fourth Rail" of American politics.
Nevertheless, the group revels in its reputation for helping the Swift Vets lob damaging volleys against Kerry last year.
"It's an honor to be equated with the Swift Boat guys," Jarvis told the Times.
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