Not the one that stood up to Communism, and the one that is now under threat from international terrorism.
Posted on 07/07/2004 6:07:24 AM PDT by yoe
Good for John Kerry. By picking John Edwards he has given the voters a real choice. The conventional wisdom in Washington held that Kerry would be smart to pick someone who underscored his national security credentials. Picking a Wesley Clark or even a Dick Gephardt would signal that Kerry wasn't going to let the Bush team out-hawk him on the war on terror and foreign policy.
By picking Edwards, Kerry has made it clear that he doesn't think this election should be framed on Bush's terms and that he wants to make a very different case to the American people.
Simply put, if Kerry really thought the war on terror was as big a deal as Bush does, there's no way he would pick John Edwards. Edwards is simply not qualified to be one heartbeat from the presidency in the world George Bush describes. Indeed, during the primaries even Kerry asked his aides about Edwards, "What makes him think he can be president?"
Clearly, Kerry has answered that question to his own satisfaction. And that answer has to be that the war on terror isn't that big a deal. We've had hints to this effect for a while. Several times he's suggested that he considers the war on terrorism a "law enforcement issue." And, in February, Kerry was asked at the Minnesota Democratic debate if he considered himself a "war president" the way Bush does. Kerry responded: "I'd see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an environmental president. So I would see myself as a very different kind of global leader than George Bush."
Around that time he also noted that he was much more qualified to be president than John Edwards because "I think that the world is looking for leadership that is tested and sure. And I think that George Bush has proven that this is not a time for inexperience in the White House."
Factor in the relatively miniscule attention Kerry paid to foreign policy when he announced Edwards as his running mate, and you get the sense that Kerry is now committed to the view that Bush is simply making too big a fuss about the war on terror and the need to stick it out in Iraq. The only appearance of the word "terrorism" was a glancing reference to Edwards' collaboration with Kerry on "bioterrorism." And twice Kerry mentioned the need to "build strong alliances" as the central priority of his foreign policy, so "young Americans are never put in harm's way because we insisted on going it alone." Let's leave it to another to ask what Kerry would do if we needed to go it alone to protect all Americans, not just young ones in uniform.
Now, I'm really not being facetious here. Especially in the wake of the mishaps of the Iraq war - no WMD, a wobbly reconstruction only now picking up steam - this country could use a really good debate about foreign policy. John Kerry thinks mending fences with France and the UN is his first foreign policy priority. He thinks "jobs" - whatever the heck that means - and education and the environment and "energy independence" are his job(s) number one.
Kerry's vice presidential pick reinforces all of that. Kerry is the most liberal Senator in the U.S. Senate, according to the respected National Journal, and in 2003 Edwards was the fourth most liberal. Edwards also voted against the $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction bill even though he voted for the war. Clearly, Kerry doesn't want to "balance" his ticket with a moderate, he wants to reinforce it with another liberal who can sell Kerry's message.
Indeed, as my colleague Byron York notes, Edwards' "Two Americas" speech, which earned him so much popularity among the Democratic base and which in turn bought him the nod from Kerry, does not mention terrorism at all. It was a crowd-pleasing speech for a party that wanted the whole issue of foreign policy just to go away. In fact, both Kerry and Edwards constantly appeal to the nostalgia of voters - "let America be America again" is Kerry's motto - for an imagined time when there were no serious challenges in the world, be it the 1990s or John Edward's childhood.
The two Johns believe that America's..................
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
See that picture above...
That's what we'll all be living in under the "let American be America again" 2Johns regime.
The two Johns believe that America's problems lie in the White House, not overseas. They believe that there's a rich supply of "allies" who would take bullets intended for Americans, if only George Bush had better manners. They believe, despite the fact that George Bush has increased spending on education by 60 percent, and despite the fact that the environment is cleaner now than any time in more than fifty years, that what America really needs more than anything is an education president, an environmental president. Meanwhile, as our enemies lop the heads off our citizens and plan more 9/11s, George Bush says we need a war president. Sounds like the makings of a great debate.
How many more times do we need to hear the "Two Americas" speech? I am so sick of it. Which America do John/John live in?
Hmmmm
Oh well.
Kerry/Edwards...two empty heads. These a$$holes are worse then the Mondale/Ferraro team of boneheads. God HELP America.
Who are these "allies" that would do this for us?
Exactly who is not with us that Kerry/Edwards think SHOULD be with us?
Let me guess: France and Germany, right?
What it boils down to, IMO, is an attempt to give cover for failure, when the Islamofascists begin dismantling Europe, using the recent Spanish model.
Kerry is not a man of courage. Men of courage don't have to tell people they're courageous---they show it, as Bush has done.
Because Kerry is not a brave man, he needs a crowd in order to act. Brave men act alone.
Although I have never heard, nor plan to hear, this vaunted "Two Americas" speech; it seems to be nothing more than a well-rehearsed, oft-repeated summation to a jury in a personal injury lawsuit.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury what you have to decide is if my poor, defenseless, hardworking, pure-as-the-driven-snow client has been harmed by the evil, profiteering, price-gouging big business."
And if this is all Edwards has, then he is indeed a one-trick pony with nothing to bring to the table but the DemocRATic standby of class warfare.
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
Not the one that stood up to Communism, and the one that is now under threat from international terrorism.
Keep posting this until every last person reads it and passes it on!
This is despicable from a candidates running for the WH!
All -- Please make sure that you read Post #11 and that everyone you know gets a copy.
Thanks!
The one where the United Nations is in charge of our elections and the terrorists come and go as they please.
John Edwards is NC's political version of Mark Garegos.
I can picture Kerry/Edwards as they ride in the limo to the rally, "John just look at those poor souls in their used cars and trucks. Look at that one! Driver whats that one called?"
"A Ford Explorer sir"
Sounds to me like Ol' Langston's talkin' bout taking our Country back from the DeeCee BureaucRATS (aka "leeches")...ya gotta know how to parse these Socialists' words...LOL!!
FReegards...MUD
I am sick of this "two Americas" diabtribe, too, but for a different reason.
There is hardly anybody in North Carolina that doesn't have somebody who worked in a mill in their family or among their friends; most of us had two parents that worked!
That does NOT mean we were POOR; granted, we weren't rich like John Edwards is now, but he had two parents who worked, he went to the two best universities in this state, and he made a better life for himself, as most of us did.
Working in a mill is nothing to look down at, IMO. Certainly not the way HE makes it sound.
It reminds me of P.J. O'Rourke story about his family; his father left he, his mother, and his twin sisters when they were young; they lived in a small house while his mother worked two jobs to support her children; but he said that didn't mean they didn't have respect for themselves and their lives. He said it didn't mean they didn't keep their house neat and clean.
And he said that they never knew they were poor because nobody from the government ever came around to tell them they were poor!
This is nothing less than class warfare, if you ask me; and from what I am reading, it appears Johnny Reid was eaten up with class envy and STILL isn't over it!
Part of Edwards' problem, IMO, of course, is that even now that he has money, he knows he did't make it honestly. No matter where he goes -- and he does SO want to be one of the big boys -- he knows that the people who are around him have earned their money the honest way.
Hmmm, so the America Kerry wants is Stalinist. Good grief!
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