Samuel,

My point was rather simple. You’ll perhaps notice I said “Bush spent any significant time on it” it would be a mistake. No where did I imply he should ignore it, rather I was implying he should not get distracted off of his strength.

Kerry’s campaign went off the rails, well, if it ever was on the rails in the first place, when he left his domestic agenda get side-tracked into a debate about Vietnam. IMHO Bush would be making the same mistake is he spent a significant amount of time discussing abortion.

Yes, Bush has to play to his base. However, as for your appeal to authority about knowing polling and campaigning — the Bush campaign just spent a Convention successfully focused on security not abortion. I’m imagine he calculates his base will vote for him this election and that the largest group of new voters he can garner are the moderates unhappy with Kerry’s weakness. If he pushes the Right’s social agenda too much he risks driving some of those moderates back into the Kerry camp.