"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

                --Archilochus

Glenn Reynolds:
"Heh."

Barack Obama:
"Impossible to transcend."

Albert A. Gore, Jr.:
"An incontinent brute."

Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
"God damn the Gentleman Farmer."

Friends of GF's Sons:
"Is that really your dad?"

Kickball Girl:
"Keeping 'em alive until 7:45."

Hired Hand:
"I think . . . we forgot the pheasant."




I'm an
Alcoholic Yeti
in the
TTLB Ecosystem



Wednesday, November 01, 2006

October Surprise!

Just in under the wire, Senator John Kerry explains what he means by "support the troops."



And his explanation and non-apology provides the last bit of information necessary for a firm diagnosis of acute Bush Derangement Syndrome:
If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.
I don't think Kerry meant to insult the troops. I think we have another example of a rich liberal Democrat who's so divorced from the universe in which the rest of us live that he has no idea what he sounds like to real people.

I'm with Jonah Goldberg:
My own hunch — echoed by many readers — is that Kerry's just a Vietnam-era fossil who thinks the old nostrums about the draft and the underprivileged still apply. That's the language he's comfortable with. That's the tradition he comes from. And that's the sort of rhetoric that comes naturally to him. He's hardly alone in perpetuating the Vietnam paradigm, but he seems uniquely gifted at sounding like a moron when he does. A lot of Kerry supporters never really understood why a "war hero" didn't win more support from military folks. The simple fact was that most military folks saw him as part of the anti-war tradition. And his service notwithstanding, that's the only reason anybody ever heard of him. So when he tried to claim credit for fighting in a war he called a war-crime, most military types saw through it as rank opportunism.

I don't think Kerry meant to insult America's military (which doesn't mean he didn't insult them). What he doesn't realize is that his reflexive Vietnam era talking points get him into trouble because — this just in — this isn't the Vietnam era. The more you think about it, the more Kerry represents almost everything wrong with the Democratic Party.
So remember. When you vote next week, you have a real choice. You can either pick the President's party -- warts and all -- or you can pick the party of the morons who decided that John Kerry should be the President of the United States.

Comments on "October Surprise!"

 

Blogger brando said ... (11:25 PM) : 

I think he's aware of what he's saying. He's just speaking aloud what the left finds fashonable to say in private.

 

Blogger Yeoman said ... (10:58 AM) : 

I think the Vietnam era fossil analysis is likely right. It's pretty common amongst Vietnam Era boomers who opposed the Vietnam War.

I've seen it quite a bit with a fellow I work with. He's opposed to the war, and was from the onset. But it is really the Vietnam War he's opposed to, and Iraq is just standing in for Vietnam.

In the mind of those people we have an Army of 500,000 men who were all drafted fighting against an indiginous army of left wing Democrats (the way they viewed the NVA and VC). Not the 125,000 men all volunteer force, with lots of Guardsmen, who are there now.

The same fellow here at work used to belittle me for having been in the Guard in the 80s. He's only just now been able to at least get over calling them "weekend warriors".

 

Blogger Chris said ... (3:46 PM) : 

Is this going to hurt republicans in the long run (i.e. next 7 days)? Repub. candidates have been running from the war for weeks now...and this little thing brings it front and center.

not a sermon, just a thought.

 

Blogger Gentleman Farmer said ... (4:40 PM) : 

I think it rather unlikely that anyone's forgotten the war, however many other matters might also influence their vote.

I think it's more likely that this will serve to remind many people, "OH! THAT'S why I voted against those morons last time!"

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (9:36 AM) : 

the baby boomer/vietnam fossil analysis fails to explain why the age group boasting the highest number of democratic voters (out of every age) is 21 year-olds. these are people who came of age politically in a political environment dominated by iraq (not vietnam), who were not even alive during the vietnam war, and who nonetheless appear to have chosen overwhelmingly the democratic party.

 

Blogger Chris said ... (12:33 PM) : 

thanks to Sdot:

http://www.slate.com/id/2152671

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (5:26 PM) : 

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/10/14/weekinreview/15kirk_graphic.ready.html

according to the NYT (citing Pew), 50% of those who turned 20 during the johnson administration vote democrat, while 52% who turned 20 during bush II identify with the democratic party. meanwhile, 41% of those who turned 20 during johnson self-identify as republican, while only 37% of those who turned 20 during bush II do.

i just don't see how those numbers support the whole "democrats are only opposed to iraq because they never got over vietnam" hypothesis. wouldn't that mean that people who weren't tainted by the whole vietnam experience should be a bit more clear-headed, and capable of seeing the light regarding this little endeavor of ours?

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (5:27 PM) : 

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/10/14/weekinreview/15kirk_graphic.ready.html

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (5:28 PM) : 

oh, well.

 

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