Will military service or lack there of be an issue in next years election?

No matter what Bushie saids they are looking for people to fill draft boards and paying 28 million to set things up... There are no running from those things.

Bush's glorious military service needs to be a huge issue. If only the media would stop kissing his ass long enough to show people the information.

Rove knows not to open this can of worms. Bush has nothing here.

If we nominate a war hero like Kerry or Clark, we can make it an issue.

If we nominate someone else, it is one less thing we can attack Bush on.

attacks Dean on evading the draft (though the ad may be only run in targeted areas).

...has absolutely no grounds to complain about a guy who was legitimately excused on medical reasons.

and I not willing to give Rove the option...sorry.

I want my nominee to have foreign relations experience and military service.

I don't care how "Nice" a candidate is, or how well their campaign is organized, or how empowered they make me feel....or how much sh*t they talk.....My overwhelming priority is to get Bush out....there is no higher order than that. The entire world is depending on us, and I not going to let them down cause I gave money to a candidate at some point.
F*ck that!

Dean is vunerable and either his supporters are ignoring it or they just don't really care. The zeal for winning the nomination is outweighing the need to win the general election. That is not a game I will be playing. Cause my future depends on who goes up against Bush in the election....not who wins the democratic nomination.

I'aint willing to gamble that Rove will play it that way or this way.

I'd rather be on the attack.........this ain't 1992 or 1996. Those fooling themselves will end up just fools!

If Clark is the nominee, they will not want to make the comparison. Clark could make an issue of it if he wanted to, but Rove will be focusing on making Clark look like someone who was not respected in the military because he's crazy.

If Dean is the nominee, they would probably avoid the temptation to bring up military service because they won't know if the Dean people will turn around and bite them in the ass with it. They will be focusing on making Dean look like a crazy hothead.

If Kerry is, by some miracle, the nominee, they will run as far away from the military service question as they can get. But they may try to make him look crazy because of whatever happened to him in Vietnam.

with your assessement.

First, they have already tried to mark Clark as crazy. It ain't working now, and it won't work during the General election. The man is too sane, too rational and to heroic. It won't wash. Just like them trying to fade the general's candidacy didn't wash. And Lord knows they tried. They had figured that showing the tape of him praising Bush team about his hopes for them in EUROPE would kill him on the onset. fortunately for us, they underestimated the Clark factor. They have thrown most of their torpedoes at him...and currently Cohen/shelton/ralston are starting to look like larry/curly/and moe. General Smackdown has their number and that is why dems realize that he's the one that would beat Bush (hence the polls are always the same on one factor, Clark has consistently shown the best numbers against Bush)

Second, they would use it on Dean.....don't think that they won't. The fact that they can show Bush as having had Foreign policy experience during his presidency, and Dean having had none would trump "military service" anyway......Plus, they've got the tax thing going on against Dean. so they can twist it just the way that it suits them.

Third, Kerry cannot win. He has absolutely no charisma....it almost doesn't matter what he has done.....the pizazz ain't there. When you look into those eyes....you see nothing...no passion, no anger....just bland drooping eyes. He can barely get the Democrat's attention, let alone those swing and independent voters who will vote for a liberal north England long time politician like they would go skiing in Hawaii.

I like Kerry, you might get me wrong, but Kerry just is missing the very thing that Repugs thinks Bush has got.....So they wouldn't even have to throw in the military service.....they wouldn't even have to go that far.

Guard career was. We're not just talking about an AWOL. We're talking about a big hole caused by some unsavory business that kept Bush and his buddy James "BCCI" Bath from taking a medical, an evasion that suspended them both from flying. The AWOL episode is a sign of that primal event. They do not want to focus people's attention on it.

Now it may be that they have lived with this mess of Bush's life for so long that they have looked at it from every angle and are confident they can keep it firmly under their control. And I'll admit, they've done a smashing job of that so far. But they cannot have considered all possibilities, and they'd be idiots to try to play with that fire. Bush may be lucky, but luck isn't constant.

is whether military service or the lack of it will be a factor in the 2032 Presidential election (when someone 20 years old now is close to 50).

Let's say that the nominee is not Kerry or Clark.
The debate will go something like this:

Moderator: How do you feel about military service?

Dem. Candidate: Well, having never served, I feel like I missed out on being a part of American History.

Moderator: And you, Mr. President?

Bush: (suprised looks over at Dem.) Hey! Me too! What do ya know! ....I've got an idea, let's get to the bottom of this debate: gay marriage.

It's still called a gamble, IMO.

The debate issue may not be "military service" as you said....But mark my word the debate will be about more than gay marriages.

Foreign policy experience will be a factor that has Bush having some (no matter how bad it turned out)...

and Dean having NONE.

That's where the debate will go.

Let us put on our thinking caps and not leave them lying around.

OK?

the measure of foreign experience? Not exactly the best foot forward as far as the rest of the world and relations with it are concerned. If we wanted foreign policy experts we would elect diplomats.

Carol Mosely Braun has better foreign policy potential than the whole lot of posturing macho men.

http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb120701.htm

Not to mention the Dayton Accord. So yeah Clark's got foreign policy experience in spades:).

The only thing AWOL has is Iraq and weapons of mass distraction.