# Bush-Kerry Debate: Part Deux **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 9, 2004, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302 "2004-10-09T00:42:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 37
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/721 "2004-10-10T03:24:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, I’ve been throwing salt over my shoulder to keep the dragons away for years…It must be working. Exactly. Unless another dragon attacks, people may very well believe it’s the salt. That’s not to say that I _personally_ believe that Bush can take credit for anything. But I believe a lot of folks in this country are not asking themselves “Which candidate has a better track record on the environment?” but rather “Who can better protect us from the terrorists?” Given that there have been no further attacks on our soil since 9/11… that’s what I believe will tip the scales for Bush. There are a lot of issues last night in which I thought Kerry came across as the “winner”: the environment, the unemployment figures, the supreme court question, abortion. However, at the end of the day, I think these issues are completely overshadowed by the big elephant sitting in the middle of the living room called terrorism. If, God forbid, there is an attack prior to the election, then I’d say that people might very well turn to Kerry. If not, I think Bush will edge out a victory. Just my HO. Feel free to ask me to eat my words on November 3rd. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/722 "2004-10-10T03:46:06Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > If, God forbid, there is an attack prior to the election, then I’d say that people might very well turn to Kerry. If not, I think Bush will edge out a victory. Just my HO. Feel free to ask me to eat my words on November 3rd. Quite the opposite. If there is an attack, I believe the sheeple wil be spooked into staying the course in a desire to maintain a veneer of stability in a dangerous world. If there is no attack, they will feel less threatened, and more likely to make a change to Kerry who holds out the hope of improvement in in the economy and Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/723 "2004-10-10T04:17:42Z")
From [http://www.electoral-vote.com/](http://www.electoral-vote.com/), 10/9/04: > [@](#): > > The first poll on the second debate shows the results much closer than debate #1. According to a Gallup poll of 515 registered voters, Kerry won by 47% to 45%. When asked if they felt more favorable about the candidates after the debate, 38% were more favorable to Kerry and 20% were less favorable. For Bush the figures were 31% and 20%. For a challenger, these are good numbers. Historically, when an incumbent is running for reelection, the undecideds typically don’t like the incumbent but are not sure if the new guy on the block is up to the job. His task is to convince them he can do it. In the past, the undecideds have ultimately broken 2 to 1 for the challenger. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/724 "2004-10-10T06:14:52Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by blowero > To be precise, he refused to say he’s against it, which is really a distinction without a difference. I don’t have a written cite, but it was in response to a direct question posed in the debate. > > He did? I heard him make a very strong point that it would not be fair, given that abortion is a legal right, to have it be the exclusive province of the wealthy, so that he would allow federal funds to pay for it. Isn’t that what I said? He didn’t actually explicity say, “I will federally fund abortions”, but he did imply it. Hence my words, “distinction without a difference”. I don’t get what your point of disagreement is. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/725 "2004-10-10T09:15:22Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > Are you deliberately missing the point, or have you not bothered to follow the provided links that elucidate the subject? > > George W. Bush’s 2001 tax return included $84 in **Schedule C, Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship)** income for his **part ownership** in _The Lone Star Trust_. > > Schedule C. > > Part ownership. > > That is not the same as Dividend Income, which does _not_ qualify someone as a “small business,” as Schedule C income does. > > For the sake of full disclosure, however, Bush did switch to reporting his income from _The Lone Star Trust_ as “royalties” in subsequent years. That does not mean that he hasn’t reported a “part ownership” in said company in the past, and declared “Business Income” from it – he has. So _that’s_ what Kerry was mumbling between “he” and “owns”. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/726 "2004-10-10T09:26:48Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > All that means is that the Democrats are better at spamming internet polls. Those polls are worthless. No one watching those debates is going to believe that an unbiased sampling of the population throught that Kerry won it by an 88-12 margin. The Democratic Underground Board has been preparing their legions for weeks for just such battles. Glad to see they’ve been keeping busy. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/727 "2004-10-10T11:36:54Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > The Democratic Underground Board has been preparing their legions for weeks for just such battles. Glad to see they’ve been keeping busy. The D.U.B. doesn’t have a lock on dirty pool. This, from [Josh Marshall](http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com): > [@](#): > > Amazing. Right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns local TV stations across the country, is ordering its stations to preempt normal broadcasting a couple of days before the election to air an anti-Kerry film made by a former ‘reporter’ for the _Washington Times_. > > Basically, it’s a 90 minute Swift-Boat ad which Sinclair is ordering stations seen in a quarter of the nation’s households to show a week before the elections. Great strategy. Have your lies been revealed? Just put them on ice, and trot them out again at a time when there isn’t enough time for anyone to research and expose them. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/728 "2004-10-10T11:46:49Z")
[According to Gallup](http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=13549): By 83%-10%, Republicans thought Bush won the debate. By 87%-8%, Democrats thought Kerry won the debate. By 53%-37%, Independents thought Kerry won the debate. IOW, Kerry did well with respect to all three groups. Especially the independents, obviously, and that’s where the election’s going to be won or lost. But we also know that Republicans poll much more uniformly for Bush than Democrats do for Kerry. (For instance, the last Pew poll gave Kerry an 85-9 edge among Dems, and gave Bush a 90-3 edge among Pubbies.) So seeing Dems a bit more confident than GOPers that their man won the debate is also a favorable indicator. Gallup’s sample for this poll had 38% Republicans to 32% Democrats, hence the closeness of the overall total. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/729 "2004-10-10T12:08:09Z")
Question 3 wound up being a general Iraq question. I thought Kerry did particularly well with his mention of three things he hadn’t brought up before: 1. That the DoD had shut out our allies who weren’t part of the Coalition from the reconstruction. (He should have taken this farther, though: a lot of Iraqi state industries used equipment from countries like Germany, Russia, and France, and after the war, they desperately needed spare parts. But they couldn’t get the parts, on account of our policy.) 2. The meeting of the North Atlantic Council, where the possibility of a total takeover of Iraqi troop training was discussed, but the US was silent. 3. King Abdullah’s statement that Iraq was too chaotic for elections. He also got more detailed about Hagel’s evaluation of our Iraq situation, and that was good. Bush, OTOH, said that Kerry’s plan should sound familiar, because it was the Bush plan. Then he criticized it! He also reiterated that we’d caught 75% of the AQ leadership (too bad they keep on finding new leaders). This was Kerry’s last opportunity in the debates to point out that only about 8000 of the 100,000 Iraqi troops and police we’ve trained have had the ‘full’ 8-week training; unfortunately, he missed it. Too bad; if there’s a single vignette that shows the hollowness of the Administration’s claims on Iraq, I think that’s it. A couple questions later, Bush got off this zinger: > [@](#): > > That answer almost made me want to scowl. > > He keeps talking about, “Let the inspectors do their job.” It’s naive and dangerous to say that. That’s what the Duelfer report showed. He was deceiving the inspectors. Maybe in BushWorld, the Duelfer report said that. But to the rest of us, it said the inspectors would have found what they were finding when we pulled them out - little reason to believe Saddam had anything approaching a WMD program. What do you do when the President of your country apparently lives in an alternate universe? I think the answer is, we give him his walking papers, so he can live there full time, without the burden of having to hold office in this universe. Question 6 was the one on the draft, and it was also the one where Bush advanced threateningly on Charlie Gibson. And it was the one where Kerry pointed out (1) that countries are leaving the coalition, and (2) if Missouri were a country, it would be the third-largest in the coalition, after the US and the UK. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/730 "2004-10-10T12:33:06Z")
> [@Early Out](#): > > The D.U.B. doesn’t have a lock on dirty pool. This, from [Josh Marshall](http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com):Great strategy. Have your lies been revealed? Just put them on ice, and trot them out again at a time when there isn’t enough time for anyone to research and expose them. Right **Early Out** - my “lies” have “been revealed.” Great research my man!! ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/731 "2004-10-10T12:43:14Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > Right **Early Out** - my “lies” have “been revealed.” Great research my man!! Reading comprehension failure, again. The lies are coming from the Swifties. Not you. “Have your lies been revealed” is what we refer to as a “rhetorical question” (you could look it up). The “your” in that sentence doesn’t actually refer to you. I guess that’s the part that confused you. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/732 "2004-10-10T12:49:58Z")
> [@Early Out](#): > > Reading comprehension failure, again. The lies are coming from the Swifties. Not you. “Have your lies been revealed” is what we refer to as a “rhetorical question” (you could look it up). The “your” in that sentence doesn’t actually refer to you. I guess that’s the part that confused you. Right **Early Out** - “You” are doing the two step - no? And when I say “you” I also mean the Swifities. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/733 "2004-10-10T13:14:10Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > Right **Early Out** - “You” are doing the two step - no? And when I say “you” I also mean the Swifities. I guess my reading comprehension is failing this morning, too, because I don’t understand this post at all. What’s “the two step?” Do you mean, “planning a last minute smear campaign?” If so, some evidence, please? And which of my lies are you referring to? A cite would help. And you’re lumping me in with the Swifties? On what basis? Give me _something_ to work with! ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/734 "2004-10-10T13:20:49Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > My vote: John “I have a plan” Kerry slightly edged out George “We must kill the terrorists” Bush in this debate. > > But I predict Bush will win the election. I hate to bring back the words “siilent majority” but I believe it exists and I believe they would rather have a hawk at the helm than a dove right now. > > The biggest plus that Bush has right now: There has been no major attacks on our soil since 9/11. His plan to keep them engaged “over there” so they won’t come and bother us over here seems to be working. > > When people are getting their heads chopped off, people get scared. They want to feel safe. That means a strong leader who won’t blink. Even if he’s a bumbling idiot, at least Bush has shown he has resolve. And I believe that gives him an edge. Is that what the media is referring to when they keep bringing up the “security moms”? I really didn’t understand it before. Thank you for explaining the view. I don’t agree, vehemently, for a number of reasons - but at least now I know what they’re talking about. Very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/735 "2004-10-10T13:21:55Z")
A short one, to finish off the Iraq/AQ stuff. We’re up to Question 7 now - initially about why no terrorist attacks since 9/11, but having diverged as usual. Bush says: > [@](#): > > And if Iraq were to fail, it’d be a haven for terrorists Well, yeah. And exactly when did the Administration even hint at this risk when we were considering going to war? Seems somebody overlooked something somewhere. (But I guess it wasn’t a ‘mistake’. :rolleyes: ) It wasn’t like civil war in postwar Iraq was a particularly farfetched possibility, given the Sunni-Shi’ite-Kurd divisions, and any internal conflict would let the terrorists in. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/736 "2004-10-10T13:49:33Z")
Let’s get domestic. Question 8 was about importing drugs from Canada. Bush speaks: > [@](#): > > When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn’t kill you. > > And that’s why the FDA and that’s why the surgeon general are looking very carefully to make sure it can be done in a safe way. I’ve got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you. > > And what my worry is is that, you know, it looks like it’s from Canada, and it might be from a third world. > > And we’ve just got to make sure, before somebody thinks they’re buying a product, that it works. And that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Near the prescription counter in my drugstore, there’s a whole wall of bottles of pills that claim to be able to restore virility, sharpen your thinking, and all sorts of stuff. “Dietary supplements,” the legal snake oil of the turn of the millenium. Few of them do what they claim to do, and some are genuinely dangerous when taken in quantity. But because they were once folk remedies (in much weaker concentrations), Congress blocked the FDA from regulating them. (Thanks, Newt.) You want to make sure that it cures us and doesn’t kill us, that government is doing everything it can to protect us, Mr. President, this is the place to start. Question 10, about Federal spending, was the one where Bush told his whopper about having reduced the annual increase in non-defense discretionary spending from 15% down to 1%. That’s a baldfaced lie, but it’s been covered by others on this page; just scroll up. He also mentions his ‘detailed budget’ to cut the deficit in half in five years. The details are: no new tax cuts, no extensions of any tax cuts already passed (which Bush wants to make permanent), no spending involving Iraq or Afghanistan, no fix of the Alternative Minimum Tax…IOW, his plan to cut the deficit in half is in total conflict with his actual plans. Question 11 was Kerry’s pledge not to raise taxes on families earning under $200K a year. I thought his talking about scaling back plans for some of the programs he wants, due to the growing deficit, was pretty effective. Ditto the pledge to return to pay-as-you-go. (Note that Bush makes no similar pledge, but can only trash Kerry, with the bogus “he voted to break the spending caps over 200 times” bit. Geez, didn’t his dad use the same bogus numbers to try to smear Clinton in 1992? The real number usually turns out to be something like ‘five’. This is such a shopworn ploy, I assume its bogusness has filtered down to even those who don’t think about politics much.) I thought that Kerry could have ripped Bush a new one on the environment question (#12), but I thought he did passably well in pointing out that Bush’s words and the reality are two different things. His strongest points were with (1) Bush’s air-quality chief resigning in protest, and (2) the absence of any attempt to ‘fix’ Kyoto. At the time, the Administration had indeed pledged to come up with a more realistic alternative, so fixing it was in fact the Administration’s stated position. They have not lived up to it. Hopefully Kerry will point this out in the final debate. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/737 "2004-10-10T14:22:38Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > Isn’t that what I said? He didn’t actually explicity say, “I will federally fund abortions”, but he did imply it. Hence my words, “distinction without a difference”. I don’t get what your point of disagreement is. Well, not to belabor the matter, but you did attempt to correct someone who said that Kerry would provide federal funding for abortions by saying that “he refused to say he’s against it.” I think explicitly saying that you are for something (which Kerry did) is a bit stronger than “failing to say you oppose it,” which is actually a mischaracterization of his statement. There is a difference in the distinction. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/738 "2004-10-10T23:37:35Z")
Yeah, I know: no one’s reading this thread anymore. I’m just doing this out of sheer cussedness at this point. And so we finally get to Bush talking about Subchapter S corporations - which has to win the prize for This Year’s Most Obscure and Wonkish Debate Topic. And it’s the Bush/Cheney team that’s brought it into play. Both of them. And if that isn’t surprising enough, they’ve taken opposite sides from one another. To Cheney the other night, Subchapter S was a sleazy, back-door way to avoid taxes that one fully ought to have paid. But to Bush, Subchapter S meant good, wholesome small businesses who shouldn’t be taxed a dime more - but if Kerry were elected, he surely would. Here’s the quotes. Cheney, to Edwards: > [@](#): > > “While you were in private practice in law and as a senator, you had the advantage of a special tax loophole, Subchapter S corporation, which you set up so you could avoid paying $600,000 in Medicare taxes that would have gone into the fund.” Bush, Friday night: > [@](#): > > Now, he says he’s only going to tax the rich. Do you realize, 900,000 small businesses will be taxed under his plan because most small businesses are Subchapter S corps or limited partnerships, and they pay tax at the individual income tax level. And so when you’re running up the taxes like that, you’re taxing job creators, and that’s not how you keep jobs here. I guess the answer is, Subchapter S is a wonderful tax status for small businesses, unless they’re owned by John Edwards, in which case it’s a slimey loophole. That was in the discussion of Question 13, which was also when we found out Bush didn’t know what he reported on his tax returns. (“Need some wood?”) Question 14 was about the Patriot Act, which Bush loves. Kerry pointed out that it was hardly flipflopping to decide it needs fixing, when you meet a man who was imprisoned under the Act for 8 months without even being able to see a lawyer. Question 15 was about stem-cell research, and Kerry raised a basic point that Bush has no answer for: what do you do with all those frozen embryos that are the leftovers from fertility treatments? You can say you shouldn’t kill them, but if so, exactly what are you going to do with them instead? Let’s face it, the pro-life movement may be ready to protest outside abortion clinics until we all die of old age, but they won’t be so popular - and they know it - if they start picketing fertility clinics. Question 16 was about the Supreme Court. [Dred Scott is winger shorthand for abortion](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/9/16460/5820). Bush was reminding his base (under the noses of the rest of us) that the payoff is finally coming, so they’d better vote for him. So he wins that point. Question 17 was about abortion. I thought Kerry did pretty well with his “it’s not that simple” - by giving for-instances of exactly why it wasn’t that simple. After that, Bush’s ‘it seems pretty simple to me’ seemed lame and impotent. And finally, in response to Question 18, Bush still hasn’t made any mistakes. He and Jesus really _are_ close! ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/739 "2004-10-10T23:56:07Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Yeah, I know: no one’s reading this thread anymore. I’m just doing this out of sheer cussedness at this point. “We’re defending this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she ever did!” ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302/740 "2004-10-11T00:19:51Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#): > > Well, not to belabor the matter, but you did attempt to correct someone who said that Kerry would provide federal funding for abortions by saying that “he refused to say he’s against it.” I think explicitly saying that you are for something (which Kerry did) is a bit stronger than “failing to say you oppose it,” which is actually a mischaracterization of his statement. There is a difference in the distinction. I’m not sure which thread _you’re_ reading, but that’s not what happened at all. Actually, spooje didn’t believe that Kerry _did_ say it. So I pointed out to spooje that while Kerry didn’t explicitly say “I will federally fund abortions”, he did imply that that would be the case. So you have it exactly backwards. I was arging that yes, Kerry _did_ favor federal funding for abortions. > [@](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by spooje > Kerry wants federally funded abortions? He wants the federal government to pay for abortions? Can I get cite on that? > > Blowero: > To be precise, he refused to say he’s against it, which is really a distinction without a difference. I don’t have a written cite, but it was in response to a direct question posed in the debate. And no, despite your claim, Kerry did not explictly say he would federally fund abortions. He _did_ strongly imply it, and my point was that in effect, it’s the same as explicitly stating it. So we are in fact making the same point; you just fail to realize it. Here’s the quote from the debate, provided in an earlier post: > [@](#): > > Now I believe that you can take that position and not be pro-abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life and making certain that you don’t deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the Constitution affords them if they can’t afford it otherwise. As you can see, there is no _explicit_ statement that he will federally fund abortion, but there _is_ a very strong implication. Which is why I said it’s a distinction without a difference. Please try to read more carefully in the future. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302.md?page=36) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-kerry-debate-part-deux/268302.md?page=38)