Re: Meet the Next President--Kerry's Second Shot
- From: "J.C." <jccsplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:10:51 GMT
<tabbott@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hr2jg2hfcp6e4oufjc7k41kjc5j0vaovdi@xxxxxxxxxx
Found at:
http://www.examiner.com/printa-284761~Meet_the_Next_President:_Kerry's_Second_Shot.html
Bill Sammon, The Examiner
Sep 14, 2006 5:00 AM (5 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 1 of 5,491 articles
KEENE, N.H. - Moments before Sen. John Kerry shows up to campaign for
a local politician at a backyard rally here, voter Sue Borden wrinkles
her nose at the mention of the man who lost to President Bush.
"You get one chance," the Democrat tells a reporter. "If you can't
win, then it's time to let someone else try."
But less than an hour later, after she meets Kerry and listens to him
deliver an impassioned speech from a wooden deck, Borden softens and
says she would consider voting again for the Massachusetts Democrat.
"I always liked what he stood for but felt that he was very snobbish
and arrogant," she says. "He's not that way. People told me I would
change my mind once I met him. And they were right."
It is not clear whether Kerry will have enough time to personally meet
and convert every disaffected Democrat in the nation by the election
of 2008. But he appears determined to at least counter the
conventional wisdom that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has all
but locked up the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I don't buy it," he said in an interview with The Examiner this week.
"You know, people sit with you and talk with you here, and they're
going to make judgments about who can be president. They're going to
make judgments about who can run.
"I think I'd be a good president," he adds, sitting on the wraparound
porch of an old house in Keene. "I don't care what the dominant,
conventional wisdom is today; it will not be the dominant,
conventional wisdom in a year."
But even if Clinton were to stumble or withdraw, other Democrats are
poised to step in. Some are already hinting that Kerry had his chance
and blew it by losing the all-important swing state of Ohio in 2004.
Similar arguments were made against former Vice President Al Gore when
he lost the crucial state of Florida to Bush in 2000.
"We are making a mistake if we put up candidates that are only
competitive in 16 states, and then we roll the dice and hope we win
Ohio or Florida," says former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, another
Democrat eyeing the White House.
Far from being offended by this remark, Kerry says he agrees with it.
"I would say the same thing," he says. "If I were lucky enough to do
it again, I'm going to make sure we're campaigning in way more
states."
Kerry says the only reason he didn't compete in more states in 2004
was that he ran out of money. He says this was also the reason he did
not adequately respond to a series of devastating TV ads by Swift Boat
Veterans for the Truth, a group that questioned Kerry's service in
Vietnam and criticized his later opposition to the war.
"They had money behind the lies, and we did not have sufficient money
behind the truth," Kerry laments.
[It does not cost any money to make one's military record public.
All Kerry had to do was sign a form authorizing the release of his
military records, and then we could all see for ourselves whether it
was Kerry who was lying, or it was all the Swiftboat veterans who
served with him.. To this day, Kerry has not made his complete
military records public, even though he publicly stated he would do
so. It looks to me like Kerry is the liar, here, based on past
experience. Will he ever come clean? I doubt it, since coming clean
would probably mean he shows himself to be a liar, almost as much of a
pathological liar as Bill Clinton himself.]
Asked if he dreads the prospect of being "Swift-Boated" all over
again, Kerry counters that he would relish such a fight.
"I'm prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other,"
he declares. "I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to
demolish it and to even turn it into a positive."
[If you will not make your military records public, then people will
naturally think you have something to hide and you won't be able to
refute this tendency. And as long as you keep your records secret,
the Swiftboat veterans will be kicking *your* ass, just like they did
the last time.]
Kerry's tough talk triggers laughter from John O'Neill, a fellow
Vietnam veteran who helped found Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and
wrote a blistering 2004 book on Kerry, "Unfit for Command."
[Yeah, I got a pretty good laugh out of it, too.]
"Well, he's got eight times as much time to prepare for us as he spent
in Vietnam," says O'Neill, referring to Kerry's short tour of duty.
Kerry's blunt rhetoric on the Swift Boat Veterans
[It should more properly be described as "bluster".]
is a far cry from his 2004 attempt to straddle the question of
whether to fund U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,"
he said during the election, cementing his reputation as a
flip-flopper.
[The truth *wil* come out eventually. Just like it did in this
case.]
The utterance was draped around Kerry's neck and was widely viewed as
a factor in his defeat. And yet now he voluntarily alludes to the
gaffe while criticizing Bush's recent reversal on the handling of
enemy combatants.
"No American president should be for torture before he's against it,"
Kerry said at Boston's Faneuil Hall last weekend, allowing himself a
rueful smile as the crowd erupted in cheers.
[Another Kerry lie. President Bush has never been in favor of
torture, and Kerry could not prove his slander if his life depended on
it.]
Eager to shed his image as an overly cautious politician, Kerry now
prefers to "let it rip," according to several of his closest advisers.
"I learned a lot of lessons in the campaign," Kerry tells The
Examiner. "And one of them is to keep it simple. Direct."
Yet Kerry's stance has been anything but simple on the question of
whether to implement a specific timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops
from Iraq. While Kerry opposed such a timetable last year, he now
supports it.
"I don't see that as a contradiction," he says while munching
chocolate chip cookies.
[That's one of your major problems, John. You don't recognize a
contradiction when you see one, if it applies to you. You have a
talent for rationalizing anything you do, contradictory or not.]
He explains that the politics of Iraq have changed dramatically since
he opposed a timetable.
"We didn't have an election; we hadn't had a constitution; there was
no provisional government," he says. "To set a timetable in that
circumstance would have been wrong.
"But once you've had the election, once they've accepted democracy,
once they've put together a government, the only thing left to do is
complete the task of security transformation," he adds. "And I think
it's reasonable, then, to have a standard by which [the Iraqis] assume
a sense of urgency and responsibility."
[The security transformation has not been completed and setting a
timetable in this circumstance is wrong.]
Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report, says it will not
be easy for Kerry to convince Democrats to give him another chance
after coming up short in 2004.
"Kerry came out as damaged merchandise," Cook says. "Badly damaged
merchandise."
[Good! We are very lucky Kerry lost. Just to mention one reason:
Kerry opposed continuing to develop defenses against incoming
ballistic missiles. Considering the current world situation, with
North Korea and Iran and other rogue states acquiring missile launch
capabilities, do you think not building defenses against such threats
is a good idea? John Kerry did and I assume still does. President
Bush, on the other hand, pushed missile defense development as fast as
possible, and because of this, we now have a rudimentary ability to
defend ourselves against maniacs with missiles and WMD, and a robust
missile defense system will not be far behind. Had we listened to the
Clintons and Kerrys of this world, we would not have any defense
against missile blackmail from rogue states.]
Kerry acknowledges there is some "legitimacy" to such analysis.
"If you have hundreds of millions of dollars spent saying something
about you, some of it sinks in," he shrugs.
[Aw, you poor thing! "Hundreds of millions"! What a joke! The
Swiftboat veterans didn't come close to spending that much money
saying something about you. Something you could not refute. Your
military records presumably would have proven the Swiftboat veterans
wrong, but you refused to allow the public to see those records. Why
wouldn't people think you have something to hide?]
I wrote John Kerry about 10 letters, all including self addressed stamped
return manila envelopes asking him to point out the lies in the Swift
Boaters book. He never answered. I have read all 3 of the books, Kerry's
biography, Tour of Duty and Unfit for Duty and the only lies I have been
able to find are in "Tour of Duty" and his biography. What really gets me is
that the Kerry crowd will holler and scream about all these lies, while
Unfit for Duty DOCUMENTS with official documents every claim they make in
the book where Kerry or his biographer does not document one single thing.
But, forgetting all of that, what kept most of us veterans from voting for
him was the POW thing.
--
Why us Vietnam Vets don't care for John Kerry or John McCain
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0408,schanberg,51276,1.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0408,schanberg2,51267,1.html
J.C.
.
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- Meet the Next President--Kerry's Second Shot
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