Posted on 10/14/2004 5:56:49 PM PDT by wagglebee
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the post-debate spin coming in hot and heavy, and I guess the big thing coming out of the debate -- as I thought it would be last night -- was the use by presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry of the sexuality of Dick Cheney's daughter, and the reaction that has come from that last night and into today. One of the most interesting things that I heard last night was Marybeth Cahill. She's part of Shrum wing of the Kerry campaign, the Clinton-wing is run by Joe Lockhart. Sometimes these people don't connect, but Marybeth Cahill on Fox said that Cheney's daughter's sexual orientation is fair game for Kerry's quest for the presidency. Now, there's one way to interpret that. The way to interpret that is that the Kerry campaign wanted to use Mary Cheney, and to me that's an incredible admission. This is something that you or I would not talk about at a dinner party; John Kerry will talk about before 50 million people because it might help him. Might, depends on who you talk to.
Some people think, "Well, Cheney deserves this because he's sequestering his daughter," which isn't true. She's part of his campaign. Others say, "Hey, she is fair game. She's part of the campaign. She's in public life." But she's not really in public life. She does work behind the scenes in the campaign, but she's not trotted out just like Chelsea Clinton wasn't trotted out. I'll tell you, the best way to judge this is how did you feel, not what did you think, but how did you feel when that line went by? Did that sort of take something out of you? I almost heard it as a pejorative when Kerry said it. I heard it as a criticism. Here's the line. Here's what Kerry said last night. Bob Schieffer, the moderator, said, "Both of you are opposed to gay marriage, but to understand how you've come to that conclusion I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?"
KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter -- who is a lesbian -- she would tell you that she's being who she was; she's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice.
RUSH: Now, if John Kerry wants to say, "Bob, I firmly believe that homosexuality is not a choice," that's fine. Let him say what he thinks. To bring Vice President Cheney's daughter into it, to violate her privacy? He talked about privacy a lot in this debate last night, but he doesn't give a whit about Mary Cheney's privacy. He saw fit to "out" her to people who don't know, and there's one reason he did it, and it comes from fear. The Kerry Democrats, the liberal Democrats in this country, operate from a perspective of fear of the "Religious Right," quote, unquote. They operate out of fear of Christians. They operate out of fear of people who have religious beliefs that are powerful in forming their lives, their beliefs, and the way they live. This causes panic among liberals just as does the mention of God and I thought Kerry last night, in his answers about God, was all over the place, contradictory as he could be, actually trying to be somebody he isn't.
John Kerry is a phony Catholic, and that's why the Catholic bishops have said what they have said about him, or some of the priests have. That was one of the clearest signs of what he knows is a weak aspect of his campaign, trying to sound like a practicing Christian, but he didn't know how to do it. He contradicted himself throughout the answer and then talks about privacy. "I hold these views and I want you to know what these views are, and these views animate me, but I'm not going to inflict these views on anybody else. I'm not going to impose these views." Well, what good are they? If these are foundational principles that guide you, Senator Kerry, what good are they if you're not going to share them or have them be meaningful? This is the same out that he uses on abortion.
"I believe abortion is wrong, but I'm not going to impose that view." Well, you impose your view on all sorts of other things that have to do with morality and you willingly use the power of government to impose those, but you won't on this. These people get twisted up like pretzels in this cultural area, folks, because they're hypocrites on it, and this effort last night to out Mary Cheney to those who didn't know was done for one reason. It wasn't done to answer this question. It was the second time this bunch has tried it. Edwards did it in the vice presidential debate sitting there next to Vice President Cheney, and the reason they did it is they want a bunch of the "Religious Right" who don't know that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter to know, because they think that will keep the Bush base at home.
They think if you conservative Christians out there find out that Cheney has a lesbian daughter, that you will feel betrayed that Cheney is not front-up with you, and that Cheney is keeping a secret and how can Cheney be the man he thought or how could Bush be the man he thought if there's a lesbian in this family that they are not talking about. It was the ultimate cheap shot from the people who claim there's nothing wrong with it. These are people who claim that homosexuality is fine; it's normal; everybody has a right to be who they are, as Kerry said, but let there be a lesbian in the conservative side of things and man, oh, man, let's point pejorative fingers at that person and that family. This is just plain old simple mean. It's nothing more than just mean and it was a great insight and an open window into just who John Kerry and the Democrats really are.
With Marybeth Cahill out there saying, "Well, it's fair game," it means that, "We intended to do this. We intended to use the vice president's daughter," and I think that this resonates, it's going to cause more and more people problems because if you add this and some of the other things that Kerry said in this debate last night which is just all over the ballpark. This is a debate where Kerry was on defense. You know what's amazing? The punditry is so out of whack. This conventional wisdom business is just so not worth listening to. How many times have we heard throughout this that the foreign policy debate was going to be Bush's strong suit, domestic policy debate was going to be Bush's weakness? Just the exact opposite: they had it 180 degrees out of phase. It was Kerry who came through like zilch last night on domestic policy. Bush summed it up in one line: "A litany of complaints is not a plan."
That sums up the John Kerry presidential campaign: "a litany of complaints," doom and gloom and everything can be pointed to the feet of the Bush administration. Speaking of which, there was a question last night, and I thought, just to show you how Kerry was not on his game last night, Bush unknowingly, maybe, I don't know, he was just being truthful. He set Kerry up. Kerry could have hit two grand slams with one swing last night on this vaccine question. I couldn't believe Kerry's answer! I was stunned! I couldn't believe he went into a riff on health care! He reverted to talking points. Here Bush was asked a question about why half the kids in this country are going to have to go without flu shots under his watch, and Bush gave the answer about the British company and this and that and the other thing.
Some of the answer was right, but it was a sitting-duck question for Kerry to go after, not just the rote talking points on health care, but to be fully demagogic and blame Bush for this because of his ties to Big Drugs and Big Pharmaceuticals. It would have been a total lie, because if you want to know why there is a flu vaccine shortage in this country, I'm going to tell you. The reason can be traced right back to one person, Hillary Rodham Clinton. How many of you all remember the program in the nineties that Hillary started and her husband started? They trumpeted it; it was really big about how they were going to make sure that every child in America had a vaccine and they were going to make sure that drug companies did this, and they put caps on costs. They put caps on profits. It was all designed to make sure that it got done and guess what? The program didn't work!
This is why you don't hear the Clintons talking about it now because it's their program, folks, that has led to this current shortage of vaccines. They ran manufacturers of vaccines out of business. That, and the tort lawyers who are out there suing them at every opportunity. You go into the vaccine business and you better be filled with deep pockets to handle lawsuits. The vaccine business is a risky business. People demand it. We had companies out there that went into it. One company has been put out of business, company called Chiron. I have an editorial explains this very well, second editorial in the Wall Street Journal today. But just to show you how Kerry was off his game last night, that is one example, went into these riffs of old, stale talking points. I found it amazing. I'm sitting there, I'm laughing myself silly.
This is a big domestic policy debate, right? What's the first question? Iraq! Guys are talking about Iraq in the first answer! Are we safer? Can we be safer? Are we as safe as we should be? Well, I want to get back to the invoking of the lesbianism of Mary Cheney after the time-out here, because Lynne Cheney reacted last night and Elizabeth Edwards has reacted this morning, and Elizabeth Edwards -- the lovely wife of the vice presidential candidate who is out there promising quadriplegics they'll walk if John Kerry is elected president, because John Kerry will cure paralysis with stem cell research and people who are in wheelchairs are only still in them because Bush wants them to be there, that's what he says. Now, his lovely and gracious wife is out there claiming that Lynne Cheney's response to Kerry's mentioning of her daughter last night shows her, Ms. Edwards, that Lynne Cheney is ashamed of her daughter. We have the audio.
By the way, there's another gaffe that Kerry made last night. There are two big gaffes in this lesbian comment that he made. The second gaffe was when Bob Schieffer, who – Bob, the debate's not about you, Bob -- Bob Schieffer, "All three of us," he said, "got very fortunate with our wives and married up. I guess both of you, how is it like? What's it like? What do you do, living with a strong woman?" and Bush said, "Listen to 'em. Don't slouch and stand up straight and don't grimace." It was funny as hell. The only time the audience responded last night. Well, they laughed a little bit at Kerry, too. Bush did not, in the sense that Kerry is talking about, Bush didn't "marry up," didn't marry down, but Kerry was forced to admit that he married up -- and maybe twice. But then, the question, folks, was about: "What have you learned from your strong wife?" and we don't know what he's learned from Teresa because he didn't say. He launched into this diatribe about his mother, and what have we learned about that, that his mother had to warn him three times: "Integrity, integrity, integrity."
I'll tell you that means: "Don't be a liar. Stop lying. Don't be a liar." I think there's a message here from Kerry's mom to all of us that he has unwittingly transferred to all of us. I wonder what Teresa is feeling like out there. Here's the president talking about his wife and how much he loves her and so forth and so on and she doesn't even get mentioned other than as a wealthy heiress that Kerry got lucky snagging. I'm just going to tell you it was obvious last night that Bush loves his wife and Kerry loves his mother, and if you are a woman out there and if you are a wife and the presidential candidate is asked to explain what all he's learned and how he gets along with his wife and starts launching into praise of his mother: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! Not cool, not cool. Let's go back to this lesbian business, going to start at the top. You got the order in there, Mike? Goes 1, 3a, 2, 3. Here we go. This is the Kerry original comment to start.
KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice.
RUSH: Now, who knows? The answer to this question is what the president said, "Who knows?" Science cannot answer this question definitively, and we do know... I mean look, I'm going to step in it, but I can't help it. I step in it every day here. We do know, we do know that there are middle-age and older women who choose to live with and love other women after having been married, that they have chosen. We do know that there are women who have chosen this lifestyle. It's not a matter of dispute. Now, that's not to say that they weren't born that way or were living a lie, but there are women who have chosen it later on. The point is the science doesn't know. There's no evidence whatsoever. The best evidence that you can get is anecdotal and that's from people who are gay who say, "No, I didn't chose it." Some say, "I didn't. Why would I?" But they still say they didn't choose it. So you can rely on that, but in terms of there being a scientific answer to the question. There is not. Here is Marybeth Cahill with Chris Wallace on Fox right after the debate.
CAHILL: Well, you know, I think that it's an acknowledgement. She seems to be very proud and open about her sexuality. Her parents seem to be very proud of her, and she has been a subject of the campaign off and on. I think that Senator Kerry was --
WALLACE: But she's not talking about it. Should he be talking about it?
CAHILL: Well, I mean, it comes up. There are a lot of questions here about gay marriage, and she is someone who's a major figure in the campaign. I think that it's fair game and I think she's been treated very respectfully.
RUSH: "It's fair game." She's okay to be used. His daughter is okay to be used. Now, I remind you of something here, folks. After Edwards did this, I was watching PMSNBC and they asked whether Edwards should have brought this up, and Andrea Mitchell of all people warned everybody on the Chris Matthews panel: Don't go there because they were trying to make it out that Cheney didn't like his gay daughter and was sequestering her, wasn't on stage at the Republican convention because Cheney doesn't have the guts to bring his daughter up there. His daughter didn't want to go on the stage. His daughter is involved intimately so in the campaign in a behind-the-scenes way. She is a director of the campaign in several states, but she is not out front and in public. She's not estranged from her parents. They love her dearly. They have accepted her and her partner into their lives, and Andrea Mitchell has warned: Don't go there. This is not the right place to go because the Cheneys are not guilty of the traditional clichéd stereotype that the left puts out about conservatives and Republicans when it comes to homosexuality, based from the standpoint of fear that they come from when looking at conservatives and so forth. Marybeth Cahill: "It's come up before." Yeah, one time! One time with Senator Edwards in the vice presidential debate, Ms. Cahill.
All right, now, Lynne Cheney has reacted. She did so last night in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. It's near Pittsburgh. Responding to John Kerry's remarks in the debate last night.
LYNNE CHENEY: I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more, and, you know, the only thing I could conclude is: This is not a good man. This is not a good man, and of course I'm speaking as a mom and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.
RUSH: This morning on the ABC Radio Network, the lovely and gracious Elizabeth Edwards -- the wife of the vice presidential nominee -- who has veritably assured voters in wheelchairs they'll be walking soon if John Kerry is elected. They're only in their wheelchair because Bush doesn't care about the research that would allow them to walk because if they could walk, they could get to the polling place more easily and vote for Democrats. So Bush wants to keep 'em in the wheelchair and probably because Halliburton makes wheelchairs so Bush doesn't want to get 'em out of wheelchairs. That's what John Edwards is out there saying, and his lovely and gracious wife responding to Lynne Cheney did this on This morning on ABC Network Radio.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences.
RUSH: Boy, folks, I'll tell you. This view, "a certain bit of shame"? How in the world does she have the audacity to speak without knowing Lynne Cheney, without knowing this family, without being intimately aware of how this family lives. What gives Liz Edwards the credibility and the desire to start talking about "the shame" that Lynne Cheney feels toward her daughter? This is another classic response of the left. This is a stereotype and a cliché. This is also from fear. The left looks at so much of the cultural conservative population in this country through the prism of fear, and if you understand that, folks, you will understand exactly why they get on their high horse about this. They are simply afraid. They are afraid of that which they don't understand. They're afraid of that which they consider more powerful than themselves and they are just terribly afraid of this, and so, since they can't discredit the message and they cannot successfully discredit what it is they fear, they have to discredit the messengers of the fear, in this case.
You know, the way to put this in perspective. Imagine if the tables were turned, and imagine mental health came up as a debate topic last night as part of the health care debate. Imagine if the President of the United States had said about Senator Kerry's first wife, "Well, we know that she had several bouts of depression, terrible mental depression while she was married to the senator. This happens to a lot of people. We're terribly, terribly sad about this," blah, blah. Can you imagine the level of outrage? And people say, "Well, she's not part of the campaign. She's not a public figure." Well, I defy anybody to tell me where they've seen Mary Cheney on television as part of this campaign and I defy anybody to tell me where they've seen what Mary Cheney is doing in this campaign. You know, you have to go pretty far. It's a big stretch to come up with this public figure business. Imagine if the subject were abortion and you've got a Democrat presidential candidate unnamed and you've got a daughter up there that's maybe had a couple of abortions and the president would have said, "Well, you know, abortion is one of these things. We want to make it as rare as possible. I know that the senators' daughters had at least one. We don't really know how many."
Can you imagine the explosion there would have been on the left had that been brought up? We're not supposed to talk about that, and of course, abortion is the sacrament of the left's religion. But boy, you start mentioning it when you're not entitled to and they come down heavy. Mary Cheney, "She's fair game." She's fair game. She's in the campaign. It's come up before, so forth and so on. I'm just telling you, even in the press room last night, I was watching some of the spin last night, and I normally have given up watching the spin because I know what the spin is going to be. I know what the spin's going to be on both sides, but when the spin room ends and they go to the after-debate shows, I know what the show is gonna basically say.
But I wanted to see what the reaction about this particular comment about Cheney's lesbian daughter would be, and even the esteemed Howard Fineman -- who writes columns on a Wednesday that he has to repudiate on the following Monday -- Howard Fineman even said that there was a gasp in the press room when this happened and there was a little, shall we say, discomfort that permeated the room, and that it came across to many as a low blow, ladies and gentlemen, and that is what you have to ask: if you want to know what the overall impact of this was, forget all the spin about it that's going on now, including mine, just ask yourself how you felt the moment you heard it, and I'll guarantee you that 90% of you are going to be in common with everybody else. It was, "Whoa! That's uncalled for. What's that got to do with anything? That's cheap." Whatever your initial feeling or thought was, be confident that it's in common with the vast majority of people who watched.
And just in case they didn't catch it in the debate, we have Rush and all Republicans everywhere making sure EVERYONE knows. The claim is phony when our side drones on and on about it.
This from the party of Chappaquidick Ted and B.J. Clinton.
I seem to remember something about Barney Frank's lover running a questionable "escort" service some years back. I guess he's fair game now.
Maybe it's my ESP that has had me convinced from the very beginning of this political race, the Kerry is a "low life BUM." Therefore nothing the slime does surprises me. Of course Clinton was the "other shoe" and still is. Yet, that appears to be the type of character a large number of Voters want to head the Nation. We are still paying for Clinton and Kerry is coming due, I fear.
Cheney dropped the ball in his debate.... he should have chastised Edwards for mentioning Mary instead of thanking him.
(Sing to Jack Sprat)
Silky Pony could eat no fat
His wife would eat no lean
And so between two of them
They picked the doctors' clean.
I think Rush is slightly off on this one. Kerry and Edwards are making an issue of Cheney's daughter to reinforce the impression within their base that Bush is a heartless and unthinking extremist who is behind the times on homosexual issues.
You are right. Excellent post!
Not really.
I think you've explained why they brought her name up. Still, it was a low blow.
John Kerry is a phony period
Are you here too? Obsessed with this subject, are you??
Did this give Kerry permission to bring up Mary's sexual preference? I don't think so
They don't need to reinforce any impression with their base. They simply want evangelicals to stay home on Nov 2, thus handing them a victory.
i think you'll eat your words on this one. manners matter. so does class. and kerry displayed he has neither.
Kerry told the American audience last night that he was the sponsor of 56 bills in the United States Senate during the last 20 years? That was a bald face lie that the Senator used to prove to the citizenry that he has some value as a leader. He has accomplished nothing, better make that NOTHING, during his tenure as the junior Senator from Massachussettes? We just got rid of a President who lied, why the hell would we want another?????
I would have liked to have seen Lynne Cheney walk across the stage after the debate last night, going over to Kerry as if she wanted to shake his hand, then reach up and just slap the s**t out of him for all the world to see, and say "How dare you!" and nothing else, then walk away and just dare anyone to arrest her.
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