MARQUETTE, Mich. – President Bush yesterday tagged rival John Kerry as an “out-of-the-mainstream” Hollywood liberal by pointing to last week’s New York fund-raiser in which Whoopi Goldberg reeled off an X-rated Bush-bashing rant.
“The other day my opponent said, when he was with some entertainers from Hollywood, that they we’re the heart and soul of America,” Bush told a crowd in this small Michigan town which loudly booed.
“I believe the heart and soul of America is found in places right here in Marquette,” Bush added to load cheers from the crowd of 11,000 as he sought to move the values debate to the center of the 2004 race.
On the eve of a Senate vote on banning gay marriage, Bush added: “We stand for institutions like marriage and the family that are the foundations of our society.”
Up at the top of the stands of the college football stadium stood four kids from the Erikson-McCormack clan proudly holding a long white banner with red and blue letters that proclaimed: “We are the heart and soul of America.”
Kathleen Erikson, 57, said she was so mad at Kerry’s claim that “those type of people” are America’s soul that she made the banner with Svaya Erikson, 14, Vianna McCormack, 6, Vianna’s brother, Channing, 9, and sister Olivia, 12.
On Thursday, Goldberg led the way in crude Bush- bashing at a $7.5 million Kerry fund-raiser by reeling off a series of vulgar sexual word-plays on Bush’s name while other performers blasted him as a killer, liar and “cheap thug.”
Right afterward, Kerry got up on Radio City stage and said all the performers showed “the heart and soul of our country.”