Going after Wisconsin's 10 Electoral Votes

John Kerry: tell the crowd of Cheeseheads how excited you are to visit Lambert field.

Dick Cheney:"I thought after John Kerry's visit here I'd visit Lambert Field," Cheney told a crowd at a Republican fundraising dinner Thursday night. Then he went in for the kill. "The next thing is he'll be convinced Vince Lombardi is a foreign leader."

The Washington Post opines:

Still, it might take more than the Kennedy mystique to put the "Lambert" moment behind Kerry -- a moment Kerry aides call a slip of the tongue. The Bush campaign is planning to rehash the comment until Election Day as a way of portraying Kerry as detached from the beer-drinking, bratwurst-eating folks of Wisconsin. College Republicans in Madison, where Kerry will visit Wednesday, are planning to greet him with a new sign: "It's Lambeau, Stupid!"

"He tries [too] hard to fit in with Wisconsinites, and he fumbles every time," said Jennifer Millerwise, a Bush campaign spokeswoman. "He should stick to windsurfing analogies -- only problem for Senator Kerry is that most people watch the Packers on Sunday."

This strategy is not confined to Cheeseland either. Republicans poked fun of Kerry for talking about the Buckeyes (of Ohio State University) while visiting arch rival Michigan (home of the Wolverines). These seemingly innocuous digs fit into a larger Bush-Cheney plan of fashioning the president as a common man and Kerry as a pandering patrician.