You know them. You see them every day. They sit next to you on the train, in church or in the cubicle next to yours. Whenever the question of the presidential election arises, they are quick to condemn George W. Bush using talking points picked up from the media or in the union hall. But when you ask if they will vote for John F. Kerry, they waver a bit. They are not the undecided, but the unconvinced.

They’re pretty sure that they can’t vote for Bush--after all, they are Democrats--but there’s something about Kerry that eludes their devotion. You try your hardest, earning reproachful glares at family gatherings, to convince these otherwise well-meaning people that the president deserves a second term, but you are instead requested to pass the mashed potatoes.

As the days dwindle down to a precious few till we reach November second, it is time for a change of tactics. Instead of trying to explain your views to your friends, family and co-workers, ask them where they stand on the big issues of the day. But frame your questions in ways that are different from the standard, Politically Correct norm.

In other words, because they are biased and irresponsible, you the citizens must ask Mr. Kerry’s supporters the hard questions that the press will not ask the candidate himself. You may risk further mealtime alienation, but you may be able to nudge the unconvinced in the right direction.

Taxes: The PC version is, “Do you favor Bush’s tax cuts for the rich?” Instead of trying to explain that the rich pay most of the taxes, ask first if they got their three or six hundred dollar rebate last year and then what they did with it. Next, ask if they hope one day to be rich, or if they’d like their children or grandchildren to reach John Kerry’s magic $200,000-a-year limit.

Social Security: Senator Kerry has repeatedly voted for tax hikes on Social Security benefits and is against President Bush’s plan to let young Americans voluntarily invest two percent of their income into personal retirement accounts. Ask your older friends if they would have preferred to invest their SS payments into say, low-risk T-Bills where the return on their investment would have more than tripled in the last 30 years. Then ask if they ever knew a childless person whose lifelong payments into SS died with them, instead of being able to bequeath that sum had they owned the rights to their hard-earned money.

Abortion: Do not permit the use of the euphemistic words ‘right’ or ‘choice’ to define this issue. Simply ask if they believe, in this day and age, when all manner of contraceptives are available free and everywhere, and the social stigma of unwed motherhood has vanished, that the need for legalized abortion-on-demand is still justified. Then ask if they support the ‘right’ to abortions that can occur up to the delivery date, while reminding them that all those who support the murder of the innocent were born to women who made the ‘right choice’.

War On Terror: Ask them, in light of the Oil For Food scandal, if Kerry’s ‘global test’ standard would include approval from countries such as France and Germany, whose coffers grew as millions of Iraqis were starved, savaged and murdered by the tyrant they kept in power to feed their greed. Then ask if they trust their future safety to a man who, in 1985, called the spread of Communism “a so-called threat.”

Iraq: Before the phrase, “Bush lied, there were no WMDs,” rears its ugly head, agree that, yes, no large stockpiles have been found. Then ask what they would do if they were the Commander in Chief after 9/11 and had the same information that the rest of the world intelligence community possessed, and that there was even a slight possibility that Saddam might pass WMDs to terrorists.

Don’t bother explaining that Al Zarqawi and others were in Iraq before the war, but ask why he and his Al Qaeda monsters are fighting so desperately there to thwart a Democratic Iraq now? Then ask them to reconcile these two quotes by CINC wannabe Kerry who claims he will “win the peace” in Iraq: “It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Lisa Fabrizio