And certainly, Karl Rove is the John Wooden.

In an interview with Bill O’Reilly today, Morris nailed his analysis of the Presidential campaign. With the tagline, “The Bush campaign is playing Chess, the Kerry campaign Checkers,” he described how Bush laid back in the first two debates, sticking to his ‘Kerry is a flip-flopper’ theme. Then, in the final debate, which concentrated on domestic policy, Bush came off the ropes, and succinctly tagged Kerry with the ‘tax-and-spend liberal’ moniker.

In the next few days, Kerry and his people tried to back off, and qualify Kerry’s wild massive government promises, by stating that certain things would have to be cut if it meant increasing taxes on the middle class or the deficit, but nobody bought it. Now, the issues have been stolen from him. He simply can’t go any stronger to contradict himself without tightening the flip-flopper noose around his neck.

Morris had correctly stated earlier (as did many analysts, myself included), that Kerry was going down the wrong path campaigning on the Islamofascist war, and Iraq in particular. I believe he went a bit far in stating that no Democrat can successfully campaign on foreign policy against a Republican, as many have criticisms of Bush’s specific conduct of the war. But that Democrat would be somebody like Joe Biden or Joe Lieberman, NOT John Fonda Kerry.

Now, Kerry is backed into a corner. And his campaign has resorted to the last bastion of desperate politicians, the scare campaign. And indeed, this is about the most shameless scare campaign I have ever seen – certainly the most in a Presidential race. Young people will get drafted, old people will lose their Social Security, and minorities will lose their right to vote – nothing is off limits.

But this scare campaign is so outlandish – so lacking in subtlety, I predict it will backfire on Kerry. While not as big as the landslide I predicted a year ago, I predict Bush will win handily, with at least a 50 vote Electoral College lead.