WASHINGTON — Republicans opened a potentially significant new front Thursday in their battle with Democrat John F. Kerry, launching their first broad assault against his views on abortion, gun control, gay marriage, the death penalty and other social issues.
Since Kerry effectively clinched his party's presidential nomination in early March, President Bush's campaign and the Republican National Committee have challenged him almost entirely over his record on taxes and national defense.
But a study released Thursday by the RNC also targeted the Massachusetts senator on cultural concerns, such as his opposition to banning a procedure some call partial-birth abortion and his vote against a measure that allowed states to disregard gay marriages performed outside their borders.
The study highlights Kerry's views on issues politically potent in the South, and it surfaced on the eve of a gathering of Southern Republicans that begins today in Miami.
"The portrait that emerges is that Kerry, on every issue -- economic, national security and values -- is out of the mainstream in the South and, I would argue, nationally," said Ralph Reed, the Southeast regional chairman for Bush's reelection campaign.
GOP strategists, who asked not to be named when discussing party planning, said Republicans were not planning a sustained spotlight on Kerry's cultural views at this point. "This is not Dukakis-Bush in 1988," said one, referring to George H.W. Bush's overwhelming reliance on social issues against Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in that presidential race.
But Earl Black, a Southern politics expert at Rice University, said Thursday's attack on Kerry might represent "a shot across the bow" that foreshadows the arguments Republicans will use later against Kerry in the South and in rural communities across the Midwest.
"None of those issues are explicitly Southern," Black said. "In a lot of rural, small-town America, many of those issues would resonate, and since a lot of voters don't really know much about Kerry at this point, those issues are going to be part of the battle to define him."
In 2000, Bush won all 11 states in the old Confederacy, as well as Oklahoma and Kentucky. Kerry aides have signaled their intention to compete for Arkansas and Florida, and have not ruled out targeting Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina.
