Writing in the New York Post, Dick Morris gives his plump thumbs up to the President’s latest campaign ads:

Particularly clever is the tax-increase charge. Throughout the Democratic primary, Kerry competed with his fellow candidates to denounce the Bush tax cut and to urge its repeal. Now Bush has turned the rescinding of a tax reduction into a tax increase […]

[…] voters are inclined to believe that Kerry does want to raise taxes, and they have heard the Democrat excoriate the Bush tax cuts in his speeches for a year. So Kerry has to do more than just deny the charge. The Bush attack will hit home and score deeply.

Kerry doesn’t even answer the other two charges: That he would weaken the Patriot Act and await United Nations approval before acting against terrorism. These two attacks will open up a big distance between Bush and Kerry over terrorism. While the issue now works as a positive for the president, it has yet to come into play as a negative for the Democrat.

By charging that Kerry would weaken homeland security on Kerry, Bush is framing the issue in the best possible way. With the recent horrific bombings in Madrid and the consequent rising insecurity over terrorism in the United States, any imputation that Kerry would undermine our defenses will cut deeply into the Democrat’s vote share.

True dat. Of course, real thinkers know that so-called “terrorism” is less an actual threat than it is an unfortunate cultural misunderstanding best settled by dapper diplomats in expensive shoes, and that this whole bogus Bush “security” campaign is simply a craven appeal to the fears of wheatbelt Americans — fat-bellied Ford owners whose inveterate distrust of swarthy foreigners is matched only by their insatiable appetite for Cool Ranch Doritos and Country Buffet apple cobbler. But, y’know, sometimes a cowboy’s gotta do what a cowboy’s gotta do.

Yippie ki-yay, motherfuckers.