[lowercoloradoriver]

Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

[Kaslin]

Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

Did this give Kerry permission to bring up Mary's sexual preference? I don't think so

[TheCornerOffice]

Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

I think Cheney could "fix" his earlier response now by explaining:

"When John Edwards interjected my daughter's personal life into the first debate, I chose to be generous and gracious and give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, maybe it was just a silly, spur-of-the-moment stupid comment. However, now that we see clearly that this is a well-planned, orchestrated effort to make my daughter fair game as a political target, my entire family is outraged that the Kerry campaign would stoop so low."

[hershey]

No, Cheney was very smart in handling Edwards' dig about Mary which had been slyly framed as a compliment. Cheney let a few seconds go by to make sure everyone understood he was upset, then he quietly thanked Edwards for his 'gracious comments' about his family. Tick...tick...tick...and the moderator told Cheney there was time left, did he care to say more? Cheney said NO. Everyone saw through Edwards. A few days later, Kerry proceeds with Plan A., attack GW on the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage...so he trots out the same ploy, and again names Mary Cheney...A LESBIAN...underlined, so even the dumbest Christian conservative would sit up and take notice. But just as he started down this path, you could see Kerry realize he'd just put his foot in it, big time. There was no way to say this without revealing what a putz he is, no fig leaf to hide behind. He had to finish the sentence and did, but he knew it had been a defining moment of his candidacy.

That and his statement about TerAYsa's money at the end, 'marrying up, way way up' and giggling. God, everyone knew he meant money beyond his wildest dreams. How could he say, I'd love her anyway, even if she didn't have three billion bucks? Nobody'd believe him, so he couldn't even say he loved her for her peanut butter cookies. Instead, he veered off into a feeble lie about his mother on her deathbed mumbling 'Integrity' three times. Her last words, we are supposed to believe. As someone said earlier, that's because she knew he didn't have any.

[Jorge]

Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

He knew Edwards "compliment" was really an underhanded insult.
Those smart enough to catch it would have been disgusted with Edwards already.
Those who didn't would have seen a negative Cheney response as overly defensive.

Cheney handled it with real class.

[dubyain04jebin08and12]

>>> Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

Not a good idea, IMO. Just a couple weeks before the debates, Cheney was talking about his daughter's publicly at a campaign rally. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1198505/posts

The reason such a big deal is being made of it now is:

1) The need to attack Kerry on his strengths. Make him look like a homophobe.

2) To make the third debate memorable for that comment, and not for "That must be one of those exaggerations."

It couldn't be playing out better.

[jslade]

Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.

What if Cheney had said, "Senator, are you ashamed of your FAT wife?"