Posted on 11/01/2006 3:39:26 PM PST by MadIvan
Democrats stampeded over each other yesterday to disassociate themselves from John Kerry, their presidential candidate two years ago, who has handed Republicans an election lifeline with remarks implying US troops in Iraq are there because they are stupid.
Senator Kerry, speaking to a group of students in California on Monday, said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” A video of his speech was placed swiftly on the internet and then seized upon by the White House, which has been desperate to switch the focus of voters away from the mounting toll of death and destruction in Iraq before Tuesday’s crucial elections for control of Congress.
On Tuesday night, in scenes reminiscent of the 2004 presidential contest, George Bush demanded that Mr Kerry apologise for his “insulting and shameful” remarks. Yesterday a number of top Democrat candidates joined him in calling on Mr Kerry to say sorry.
Harold Ford Jnr, who is running for the Senate in Tennessee, said: “Whatever the intent, [he] was wrong to say what he said.” Jon Tester, the party’s senatorial candidate in Montana, said: “He owes our troops and their families an apology.” Senator Hillary Clinton called the remarks inappropriate.
At the same time Democrat candidates across the US cancelled scheduled campaign appearances with Mr Kerry, whose distant hopes of another presidential candidacy in 2008 have now all but evaporated.
Mr Kerry on Tuesday had insisted that it was Mr Bush who should apologise. But yesterday he said: “Of course I’m sorry about a botched joke. I mean, you know, it’s pretty stupid.”
He claimed that his remarks had been aimed at Mr Bush for being “intellectually lazy” in getting “us stuck in a war in Iraq” — but he had fluffed his lines.
Instead, he said the mock-outrage of the White House was the latest example of the Republican campaign of “smear and fear” that had characterised attacks on his military record in Vietnam during the 2004 presidential contest, as well as his gaffe that he had voted for Iraq war funding before voting against it.
Yesterday Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, twisted the knife with a direct reference to this when he told a campaign rally: “Of course, now Senator Kerry says he was just making a joke. I guess we didn’t get the nuance. He was for the joke before he was against it.”
Mr Kerry has previously attacked the so-called “chicken-hawks” who have cast aspersions on his military record, while never seeing combat themselves. Yesterday he made no reference to how Mr Bush had avoided service in Vietnam, perhaps because it would have meant conceding that the President had got better grades than him at Yale.
# President Bush said last night that he wanted Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, to remain in his Administration until the end of his term.
Yes. John Kerry is damn stooopid.
ROFL!
Yesterday Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, twisted the knife with a direct reference to this when he told a campaign rally: “Of course, now Senator Kerry says he was just making a joke. I guess we didn’t get the nuance. He was for the joke before he was against it.”
Ouch
On Fox news tonight, the best comment so far:
I think that John Kerry's "apology" came after some serious waterboarding at the DNC.
Kerry reminds me of Lt. Tom Keefer in THE CAINE MUTINY (Fred MacMurray played the role in the movie), the snobbish weasel who incites the other officers to mutiny against Humphrey Bogart, then leaves them to twist in the wind at their court martial. There's a remarkable similarity there.
That photo has been posted at least a few million times all over over the internet, Fox News, and other balanced networks.
Finally the RATs get a clue. I'm actually surprised they did so quickly this time
Does it surprise you? If a Republican had said something like, "I believe that a major tax increase is necessary" how many of his peers would be pounding him on the back and supporting him?
don't forget ... they wouldn't let Jimmuh Carter at their 1984 convention
Can anyone think of one joke Yaaawn has ever made??
The guy has the sense of humor of a mortician.
Pray for W and The Election
Carry's non-appology appology starts out by implying that those who are offended by his remarks don't have a sufficient grasp of English to understand his "joke."
Well as I understand it The Times of London is the eldest English language newspaper in England the home of the English language and its reporter seems to have failed to understand it also.
Wonder who is English impaired.
They threw their nominee under the bus and then backed over him a few times. :-} Ah sweet justice.
"... some serious waterboarding at the DNC."
I fell off the couch I started laughing so hard...
The mental picture generated is seared into my memory!
Regards, Ivan
Kerry doesn't hold a candle to this guy: Brian., decorated, retired Air Force 2005, Ph.D. Mathematics, MS Electrical Engineering (, fluent in six languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese).
Kerry can't touch this kid's record to date either: Laurie - This 20 year old, junior, nursing major, 3.8 GPA contracted this summer to be an Army Nurse.
Does anyone have a link where that Kerry clip can be DL'ed in .avi or .wmv or .mov format? I'd love to have that clip to play now and then and relive just what an idiot that stupid stupid man is.
LOL!!
Sad, but for non-news/political intelligent folks that comment would go over the heads of over half the voters.
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