Bush Campaign Arming Republicans
with Ammo to Fight Ben Barnes Attacks

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

The Bush-Cheney campaign has issued an all points bulletin to Republican leaders and operatives to brace for an escalated rhetorical attack by Texan Ben Barnes on President George W. Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard.

The Bush campaign is anticipating torpedoes from the Texas Democrat as part of a concerted effort by opponent John Kerry's campaign to stop the president's momentum in the wake of polls showing him with a significant lead coming out of the Republican National Convention last week. The Republican presidential campaign expects attacks by the former Texas lieutenant governor as part of a two-pronged "desperation" strategy that would ostensibly include accusations against the president in a new book by American author Kitty Kelley, whose known for writing expose biographies with a tabloid flair.

"Ben Barnes will attack the President's military service," Terry Nelson, the political director for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said in a memo circulated to key Republicans around the country. "A discredited politician with close ties to John Kerry and Tom Daschle, Barnes will spread terrible lies about President Bush."

In an appearance Wednesday on the CBS News program 60 Minutes II, Barnes reiterated his recent contention that he regrets helping Bush land a coveted spot in the Texas National Guard after being encouraged by a Bush family friend. Barnes says that Bush was relatively immune from the draft as a member of the National Guard during the Vietnam war. The Texas Democrat appeared on the news program in conjunction with a report on memos from the early 1970s in which Bush's squadron commander said he felt pressure from above to give Bush positive evaluations at a time when he was about to be suspended from flight duty for failing to meet performance standards. Barnes, who was the youngest state House speaker in the nation when Bush entered the Texas Guard in 1968, weighed in on the war over the candidates' military records amid the furor ignited by the advertising blitz launched by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in an attempt to cast doubts over Kerry's record as a Vietnam war hero.

Nelson's memo includes briefing documents that assert that Barnes' statements about his intervention on Bush's behalf have gone 180 degrees in the past five years. The talking points note that Barnes is vice-chairman of the Kerry campaign a leading fundraiser for the Democrat's White House bid. They refer to a story by San Antonio Express-News writer Gardner Selby, who reported on Barnes' personal friendship with Kerry in late July. The Bush campaign briefing papers also point to a report in late July by Jay Root of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on how Barnes appears to have a job in a Kerry administration locked up if the Democrat wins in November. Also mentioned is a quote in a 2001 article by Texas Monthly's Paul Burka from Daschle calling Barnes the "the fifty-first Democratic senator."

The Nelson memo asserts that Barnes' recent statements "stand in stark contrast to his previous comments, which were given in testimony under oath." The New York Times in February reported that Barnes had testified under oath in 1999 that he was never contacted by the Bush family about getting President Bush into the Texas Guard.

To help Republicans counter Barnes' new claims, Nelson has provided additional talking points on Barnes' fall from favor with voters in the midst of the Sharpstown scandal of the early 1970s as well as his controversial ties to Texas lottery vendor GTech in the 1990s and the collapse of an investment partnership that had gone $200 million in debt in the late 1980s. While Barnes was never officially accused of criminal wrongdoing in the Sharpstown scandal, he saw his meteoric rise through Texas politics end when he came in third in the Democratic primary for governor in 1972 on the heels of the Sharpstown controversy. Barnes had been elected lieutenant governor at the age of 30 before his ill-fated bid for governor.

The Bush campaign support documents point out that Barnes has contributed heavily to Democratic candidates and committees. However, there is no mention of the fact that he has given to a few Republican candidates in Texas as well.