The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The Kerry Fallout Continues...
This is absolutely wonderful: with a big hat tip to Cold Fury, there is Army Strong and then (thanks to ScrappleFace) there is Kerry Smart.
John Kerry looked like a deer in the headlights today as he once again issued a non-apologetic "apology" for his "botched joke". He has cancelled all his campaign appearances today, and others later this week.
Meanwhile Democrat Senate candidates and some House candidates continued to distance from Kerry like rats from a sinking ship. Thomas Lifson prehaps best sums up the political damage to date of the Kerry meltdowns (bold emphasis mine):
Why is there never a GOP couple parked at a Waffle House, innocently listening into cell phone conversations among Democrat political leaders in order to capture some history for their grandchildren? Actually we know the answer to that question, and it tells us a lot about the differences between the two parties.
Still it would be a ton of fun to hear what Nancy Pelosi, currently starring in her own production of The Invisible Woman, might have said to John F. Kerry about his now infamous remarks about uneducated and unprepared people getting stuck in Iraq. He has blown her cover and nationalized the off year elections, bringing attention to the Democrats’ Achilles Heel: their weakness on national security.
Kerry can back peddle and claim he was talking about President Bush all he wants. The words speak for themselves. If there was a botched joke, on what was the humor based? George Bush getting stuck because of a supposed lack of study must be seen in relation to something else in order to be ironic and funny. Surely there is no alternative to the presumption that losers get stuck in the Army as employment of last resort. The media, led by the New York Times, has been peddling this notion for a number of years. That’s what would make Kerry’s intended joke funny. Sort of. If you are a Democrat who hates the military and thinks soldiers are dupes.
Although he has not been openly condemned by the Democrat leadership, Kerry is being asked to stay away from previously scheduled campaign appearances with a number of Democrats. This denies the sort of opportunity conservative bloggers salivated over. For example, Powerline reported
At noon [today], he will be in Mankato with Democrat Tim Wal[z] at a “veterans’ rally.”
and remarked
That should be something to see! It would be nice if some protesters, veterans and others, turn up at these events.
But Walz wised up and cancelled. So far as I know, however, he is not denouncing Kerry, only hoping that he will join Nancy Pelosi in a witness protection program.
At bare minimum, Kerry’s blunder, and especially his compounding of it with his blustery press conference refusal to apologize and over-the-top rhetoric against the GOP, will help the GOP retain control of the Senate. The tight Southern Senate races in Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri are all in states where respect for the military is higher than the national average.
But if the GOP or some 527s start running ads featuring Kerry’s words and asking voters to ask their Democrat candidates to denounce Kerry, the damage could spread.
Of course, with 6 more days until the polls, the whole thing could quiet down. But unless Kerry changes his mind and suddenly reverses course (also known as flip flopping) today, demands that candidates take a position could well continue to grab attention through Election Day.
The fundamental problem for Kerry and the Democrats (whose nominee he was, after all, in the most recent presidential race) is that his botch played right into the existing stereotypes of the Democrats as effete elitists who are not to be trusted with the national defense.
Kerry’s bomb will almost certainly destroy his chances for another run at president, not that they were ever realistic. But his peculiar psychology, where the need to defend himself from suspicions of being a wimp apparently dominate common sense, suggests that he will continue to damage his party for a few days more.
If only Nancy Pelosi were in the habit of visiting Waffle Houses, and GOP operatives were in the habit of intercepting and recording rivals’ phone calls, we might know a lot more about what lies ahead.
Meanwhile here is the esteemed Victor Davis Hanson using his own superior "edudation and intellect" to thoroughally dissect Kerry:
Kerry surely must be one of the saddest Democratic liabilities around. Some afterthoughts about his latest gaffe, which is one of those rare glimpses into an entire troubled ideology:
(1) How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth, lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education. Today, Democrats must be wondering why they have embraced an overrated empty suit, and ostracized a real talent like Joe Lieberman.
(2) How could Kerry possibly claim that he was thinking of the uneducated in the context of George Bush, who, after all, went to Harvard and Yale?
(3) Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not in the ranks of the military, but on our university campuses, where half-educated professors and non-serious students killing time are ubiquitous. Personally, I'd wager the intelligence of a Marine Corps private any day over the average D.C. journalist. Every naval officer I met at the USNA, without exception, seemed brighter than John Kerry, whose "brilliance", after all, has managed to offend millions of voters on the eve of a pivotal election. If the Democrats lose, it will be almost painful to watch the recriminations against Kerry fly.
(4) This is not the first, but third, time he has denigrated soldiers in the middle of a war-and there is a systematic theme: John Kerry's assumed superior morality allows him to pass judgment from on high about supposedly lesser folk who become tools of a suspect military: thus we go from limb-loppers and Genghis' hordes to terrorists to dead-beats. The only constant is that the haughtiness is always delivered in the same sanctimonious, self-righteous, and patronizing tone.
(5) The mea culpa that Democrats are blaming the war and not the warriors is laughable after Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, and Kerry have collectively compared American soldiers to Nazis, Pol Pot's killers, Stalinists, terrorists, and Baathists.
(6) The problem is that Kerry is not just a senator, but the most recent presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and thus in some sense, especially given the diminution of Howard Dean, the megaphone of the entire party.
(7) His pathetic clarification, as he blamed everyone from Tony Snow to Rush Limbaugh, displayed the same Al Gore derangement syndrome, and thus raises a larger question: what is it about George Bush that seems to reduce once sober and experienced liberal pros to infantile ranting?
(8) And why is the supposedly lame Bush so careful in speech, and the self-acclaimed geniuses like a Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, or Howard Dean serially spouting ever more stupidities? For all the Democrats' criticism of George Bush, I can't think of a modern President who has so infrequently put his foot in his public mouth, and, by the same token, can't think of any opposition that on the eve of elections seems to have an almost pathological death wish.
The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.
In the meantime, the elite media went into absolute pretzel-like contortions to defend Kerry's remark. And guess what: the American people see this blatant attempt at manipulation exactly for what it is:
The gift that keeps on giving, indeed.
John Kerry looked like a deer in the headlights today as he once again issued a non-apologetic "apology" for his "botched joke". He has cancelled all his campaign appearances today, and others later this week.
Meanwhile Democrat Senate candidates and some House candidates continued to distance from Kerry like rats from a sinking ship. Thomas Lifson prehaps best sums up the political damage to date of the Kerry meltdowns (bold emphasis mine):
Why is there never a GOP couple parked at a Waffle House, innocently listening into cell phone conversations among Democrat political leaders in order to capture some history for their grandchildren? Actually we know the answer to that question, and it tells us a lot about the differences between the two parties.
Still it would be a ton of fun to hear what Nancy Pelosi, currently starring in her own production of The Invisible Woman, might have said to John F. Kerry about his now infamous remarks about uneducated and unprepared people getting stuck in Iraq. He has blown her cover and nationalized the off year elections, bringing attention to the Democrats’ Achilles Heel: their weakness on national security.
Kerry can back peddle and claim he was talking about President Bush all he wants. The words speak for themselves. If there was a botched joke, on what was the humor based? George Bush getting stuck because of a supposed lack of study must be seen in relation to something else in order to be ironic and funny. Surely there is no alternative to the presumption that losers get stuck in the Army as employment of last resort. The media, led by the New York Times, has been peddling this notion for a number of years. That’s what would make Kerry’s intended joke funny. Sort of. If you are a Democrat who hates the military and thinks soldiers are dupes.
Although he has not been openly condemned by the Democrat leadership, Kerry is being asked to stay away from previously scheduled campaign appearances with a number of Democrats. This denies the sort of opportunity conservative bloggers salivated over. For example, Powerline reported
At noon [today], he will be in Mankato with Democrat Tim Wal[z] at a “veterans’ rally.”
and remarked
That should be something to see! It would be nice if some protesters, veterans and others, turn up at these events.
But Walz wised up and cancelled. So far as I know, however, he is not denouncing Kerry, only hoping that he will join Nancy Pelosi in a witness protection program.
At bare minimum, Kerry’s blunder, and especially his compounding of it with his blustery press conference refusal to apologize and over-the-top rhetoric against the GOP, will help the GOP retain control of the Senate. The tight Southern Senate races in Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri are all in states where respect for the military is higher than the national average.
But if the GOP or some 527s start running ads featuring Kerry’s words and asking voters to ask their Democrat candidates to denounce Kerry, the damage could spread.
Of course, with 6 more days until the polls, the whole thing could quiet down. But unless Kerry changes his mind and suddenly reverses course (also known as flip flopping) today, demands that candidates take a position could well continue to grab attention through Election Day.
The fundamental problem for Kerry and the Democrats (whose nominee he was, after all, in the most recent presidential race) is that his botch played right into the existing stereotypes of the Democrats as effete elitists who are not to be trusted with the national defense.
Kerry’s bomb will almost certainly destroy his chances for another run at president, not that they were ever realistic. But his peculiar psychology, where the need to defend himself from suspicions of being a wimp apparently dominate common sense, suggests that he will continue to damage his party for a few days more.
If only Nancy Pelosi were in the habit of visiting Waffle Houses, and GOP operatives were in the habit of intercepting and recording rivals’ phone calls, we might know a lot more about what lies ahead.
Meanwhile here is the esteemed Victor Davis Hanson using his own superior "edudation and intellect" to thoroughally dissect Kerry:
Kerry surely must be one of the saddest Democratic liabilities around. Some afterthoughts about his latest gaffe, which is one of those rare glimpses into an entire troubled ideology:
(1) How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth, lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education. Today, Democrats must be wondering why they have embraced an overrated empty suit, and ostracized a real talent like Joe Lieberman.
(2) How could Kerry possibly claim that he was thinking of the uneducated in the context of George Bush, who, after all, went to Harvard and Yale?
(3) Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not in the ranks of the military, but on our university campuses, where half-educated professors and non-serious students killing time are ubiquitous. Personally, I'd wager the intelligence of a Marine Corps private any day over the average D.C. journalist. Every naval officer I met at the USNA, without exception, seemed brighter than John Kerry, whose "brilliance", after all, has managed to offend millions of voters on the eve of a pivotal election. If the Democrats lose, it will be almost painful to watch the recriminations against Kerry fly.
(4) This is not the first, but third, time he has denigrated soldiers in the middle of a war-and there is a systematic theme: John Kerry's assumed superior morality allows him to pass judgment from on high about supposedly lesser folk who become tools of a suspect military: thus we go from limb-loppers and Genghis' hordes to terrorists to dead-beats. The only constant is that the haughtiness is always delivered in the same sanctimonious, self-righteous, and patronizing tone.
(5) The mea culpa that Democrats are blaming the war and not the warriors is laughable after Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, and Kerry have collectively compared American soldiers to Nazis, Pol Pot's killers, Stalinists, terrorists, and Baathists.
(6) The problem is that Kerry is not just a senator, but the most recent presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and thus in some sense, especially given the diminution of Howard Dean, the megaphone of the entire party.
(7) His pathetic clarification, as he blamed everyone from Tony Snow to Rush Limbaugh, displayed the same Al Gore derangement syndrome, and thus raises a larger question: what is it about George Bush that seems to reduce once sober and experienced liberal pros to infantile ranting?
(8) And why is the supposedly lame Bush so careful in speech, and the self-acclaimed geniuses like a Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, or Howard Dean serially spouting ever more stupidities? For all the Democrats' criticism of George Bush, I can't think of a modern President who has so infrequently put his foot in his public mouth, and, by the same token, can't think of any opposition that on the eve of elections seems to have an almost pathological death wish.
The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.
In the meantime, the elite media went into absolute pretzel-like contortions to defend Kerry's remark. And guess what: the American people see this blatant attempt at manipulation exactly for what it is:
The gift that keeps on giving, indeed.
