US Features
Bush becomes easy target in campaign ads
By Tony Czuczka
Nov 3, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The Republican candidate stands shoulder-to- shoulder with US President George W Bush, both of them all smiles. A red heart overlay closes in, framing the two politicians like sweethearts.

It's that easy this year for opposition Democrats to score points against the besieged president and his centre-right party, shadowed by an unpopular war in Iraq ahead of US Congressional elections Tuesday.

The television spot by Ben Cardin, a Democrat running to represent the East Coast state of Maryland in the US Senate, is one of dozens aimed at turning Bush's low approval ratings into the kiss of death for Republicans.

In his final days of campaigning, Bush fought back with rallies in states still considered sympathetic - and taunted the centre-left Democrats, saying they were celebrating their spoils too early.

'You might remember 2004. Some of them were picking out their new offices in the West Wing,' Bush told an audience Thursday in the north-western state of Montana, recalling his hard-fought re-election campaign. 'The movers never got the call.'

But Bush has little to smile about this year, and Republican candidates have scrambled to distance themselves from him.

Polls show the Democrats poised to end 12 years of Republican control in the lower US House of Representatives and possibly in the Senate as well, a major defeat that would hobble the last two years of Bush's presidency.

The elections could turn on how many disillusioned conservatives stay home.

On Thursday in rural, traditionally conservative Montana, where longtime Republican Senator Conrad Burns faces an unusually stiff challenge, Bush urged party supporters to go to the polls. He even suggested that people might disagree with the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his refusal to set a timetable for a US withdrawal.

'No matter what your opinion is about my decision to go into Iraq, America needs to support the men and women who wear our uniform,' Bush said.

Yet with his approval ratings below 40 per cent, Bush is a liability in much of the nation as voters choose a new 435-seat House and one third of the 100-seat Senate.

That's clear to former Microsoft project manager Darcy Burner, the Democratic challenger for a House seat in the suburbs of Seattle. A Burner campaign spot mocks her Republican opponent Dave Reichert, who has gone out of his way in interviews to say he is no blind follower of Bush.

In the ad, he is seen waving with Bush from the steps of the presidential plane. 'The real Reichert - he's just like George Bush,' claims the ad.

Michael Steele, the Maryland contender linked to Bush in the sweetheart ad, has tried to counter his closeness to the president by calling Iraq 'a mess that we need to fix' and implicitly blaming Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not sending enough US troops.

Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, both strongly associated with the war in Iraq, also have strictly limited appeal as Republican campaigners this year.

Yet US First Lady Laura Bush has been out on the campaign trail, touting her husband's policies in a less confrontational tone. In the Midwestern state of Illinois on Thursday, she urged Republicans to rally behind the fight against terrorism and other 'vital goals.'

'To accomplish them, we must have serious national conversations conducted with civility and respect,' she said.

Well, good luck. Experts say the vast majority of campaign messages by both parties are negative advertising.

Cardin, Steele's opponent in the Maryland race for an open Senate seat, does not even appear in a campaign mailing to households in the state.

Instead, it shows Bush and Steele, urging voters to 'tip the scales against the Bush agenda by voting no on Michael Steele.'