Posted on 02/20/2004 1:39:34 PM PST by Hon
From JustOneMinute:
A younger John Kerry was a strong proponent of the Nuclear Freeze. We pick up the story as our War Hero (Vietnam) enters the Democratic primary for the 1984 Senate race:
...Kerry entered the Senate race with the advantage of a statewide presence and organization. Within a few months of announcing his candidacy, however, he was in danger of losing strategic ground to US Representative James M. Shannon of Lawrence, his chief rival in the bruising Democratic primary.
Kerry had been outscored by Shannon in the endorsement questionnaire of a nuclear disarmament group that vehemently opposed the military buildup under President Reagan.
The nuclear freeze was a defining issue across the country for liberal Democrats, who were about to be flattened a second time at the polls by the steamroller of Reagan's conservatism. In Massachusetts, the activists were a key bloc, ardently courted by Kerry and Shannon, "the liberal twins," as the other two Democrats in the primary field called them.
Shannon had outscored Kerry, 100 to 94, on the questionnaire of the group, known as Freeze Voter `84, which favored canceling funds for a slew of major weapons systems.
Then a strange thing happened...
The aspiring Senator was given a chance to revise one of his answers, and raised his score to a perfect 100. Since the two candidates were perfect on the nuclear freeze issue, neither Kerry nor Shannon won the group's endorsement.
...The stalemate for the Freeze Voter `84 endorsement was an important tactical victory for Kerry. But it could be a handicap as Kerry campaigns for president nearly two decades later.
In his zeal to keep pace with Shannon's leftward drift on disarmament, Kerry supported cancellation of a host of weapons systems that have become the basis of US military might -- the high-tech munitions and delivery systems on display to the world as they leveled the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in a matter of weeks.
These weapons became conversation topics at American dinner tables during the Iraq war, but candidate Kerry in 1984 said he would have voted to cancel many of them -- the B-1 bomber, B-2 stealth bomber, AH-64 Apache helicopter, Patriot missile, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system.
He also advocated reductions in many other systems, such as the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the F-16 jet.
Hmm. That may not square well with the Senator's current "strong on national security" pose. But if Tim Russert asks, how might he answer? Better, his supporters will hope, than he answered the Globe:
In retrospect, Kerry said some of his positions in those days were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."
But he defended his opposition at the time to the MX missile, the "Star Wars" strategic defense initiative, and some other programs.
"Some of this stuff was ahead of its time. Some was not as well thought out as it might be," Kerry said of his campaign posture then. "I'm not ashamed of that. I was [40] years old, running for the United States Senate for the first time . . . and I'm sure that some of it was driven at the time by the nature of the beast I was fighting politically.
"I mean, you learn as you go in life," said Kerry. He characterized as "pretty responsible" his subsequent Senate voting record on defense.
He was only forty years old, give him a break! And we agree on this - some of the ideas he supported do look as stupid now as some of us considered them to be way back then.
But what could he mean by "the nature of the beast I was fighting politically"? Surely he is not suggesting that these positions were adopted out of mere political expediency?
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/02/the_senator_who.html
From Matt Margolis:
Kerry’s first floor speech in the Senate proved embarrassing for him as well. He introduced a “a bill to provide for a comprehensive bilateral and verifiable freeze between the United States and the Soviet Union on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons systems.” Unable to get just one cosponsor, the bill never made it to the Senate floor for a vote.
http://www.mattmargolis.com/blog/index.php?p=294
With his daughters, Alexandra, 11, and Vanessa, 8, looking on, John F. Kerry was sworn in as a senator by Vice President George Bush in January 1985.
In a crowded Democratic primary contest that was receiving scant public notice, Kerry tried to stand out, not only as a crime-fighting former prosecutor with progressive credentials, but also as a champion of a nuclear weapons freeze. For a candidate seeking a job with little influence over state policy, never mind global disarmament, the posturing was quite a stretch.
But the Vietnam War, Kerry's signature issue in the past, had long since ended. His antiwar constituency's new rallying cry was opposition to the arms buildup in the continuing Cold War. Kerry let them know he was an ally.
The freeze never caught on as an issue in the lieutenant governor's race, however.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061903.shtml
BTW, I don't recall ever hearing before that Kerry's daughter's name is Alexander. (Where have I heard that name before? LOL)
You've got to be kidding. He lives in a state that regularly elects murderers and perverts and sends them to Capitol Hill.
'The liberal twins'
 Kerry and his opponent in the 1984 Democratic primary, James M. Shannon. Kerry prevailed by a mere 24,529 votes, then handily defeated Republican Raymond Shamie.
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Kerry entered the Senate race with the advantage of a statewide presence and organization. Within a few months of announcing his candidacy, however, he was in danger of losing strategic ground to US Representative James M. Shannon of Lawrence, his chief rival in the bruising Democratic primary.
Kerry had been outscored by Shannon in the endorsement questionnaire of a nuclear disarmament group that vehemently opposed the military buildup under President Reagan.
The nuclear freeze was a defining issue across the country for liberal Democrats, who were about to be flattened a second time at the polls by the steamroller of Reagan's conservatism. In Massachusetts, the activists were a key bloc, ardently courted by Kerry and Shannon, "the liberal twins," as the other two Democrats in the primary field called them.
Shannon had outscored Kerry, 100 to 94, on the questionnaire of the group, known as Freeze Voter `84, which favored canceling funds for a slew of major weapons systems.
Then a strange thing happened. Paul F. Walker, Shannon's most prominent backer on the group's executive committee, graded the answers and laid out for Kerry campaign manager Paul L. Rosenberg both the flaws in Kerry's responses and what the "correct" answers should be.
"Walker was confused about your answer" on funding the Trident submarine, Rosenberg wrote in an internal memo to Kerry, who had originally hedged in his opposition to funding new subs.
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Freeze Voter '84 Read the previously undisclosed memo from campaign manager Paul L. Rosenberg to Kerry regarding changes to the questionnaire 
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"It is critically important that we get a 100 percent rating," Rosenberg wrote, in a memo that has not previously been made public. "You should explain how your position was misinterpreted so that he will correct the rating before it is distributed to the board tomorrow evening."
Walker "is favorably disposed to change the grading because `he knows of your strong support for the freeze and knows this is what you must have meant,' " Rosenberg concluded.
Kerry revised his answers, tied Shannon with a perfect score, and at the activists' meeting in late June denied Shannon the 60 percent majority he needed to secure the endorsement for himself. Instead, Shannon and Kerry shared the group's stamp of approval in the primary field that also included then-secretary of state Michael J. Connolly and former House speaker David M. Bartley.
Kerry today says he does not recall the amendments to his Freeze Voter `84 questionnaire, which were publicized at the time, and says his initial responses may have been an error or misinterpreted.
"I wasn't trying to be on both sides of it," Kerry said.
Walker, who said he later served as an informal adviser to Kerry, asserted that fairness, not politics, was behind his role. "We wanted to provide Kerry, and all candidates for that matter, an opportunity to clarify their positions," wrote Walker, now an administrator with the Washington-based environmental advocacy group, Global Green USA, in an e-mail response to Globe questions.
Shannon, however, was stunned to learn of his erstwhile ally's back-channel role.
"I can guarantee you this is all news to me. I never knew that," Shannon said recently.
The stalemate for the Freeze Voter `84 endorsement was an important tactical victory for Kerry. But it could be a handicap as Kerry campaigns for president nearly two decades later.
In his zeal to keep pace with Shannon's leftward drift on disarmament, Kerry supported cancellation of a host of weapons systems that have become the basis of US military might -- the high-tech munitions and delivery systems on display to the world as they leveled the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in a matter of weeks.
These weapons became conversation topics at American dinner tables during the Iraq war, but candidate Kerry in 1984 said he would have voted to cancel many of them -- the B-1 bomber, B-2 stealth bomber, AH-64 Apache helicopter, Patriot missile, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system.
He also advocated reductions in many other systems, such as the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the F-16 jet.
In retrospect, Kerry said some of his positions in those days were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."
But he defended his opposition at the time to the MX missile, the "Star Wars" strategic defense initiative, and some other programs.
"Some of this stuff was ahead of its time. Some was not as well thought out as it might be," Kerry said of his campaign posture then. "I'm not ashamed of that. I was [40] years old, running for the United States Senate for the first time . . . and I'm sure that some of it was driven at the time by the nature of the beast I was fighting politically.
"I mean, you learn as you go in life," said Kerry. He characterized as "pretty responsible" his subsequent Senate voting record on defense.
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