The Washington Post reports the Kerry incident fairly straight although they try to downplay it a little. They do report the actual words but imply that Bush did something underhanded by alerting the networks that he was going to address Kerry's remarks. But the damaging words are there for everyone to read.
President Bush last night accused Sen. John F. Kerry of disparaging U.S. troops in Iraq, echoing the 2004 strategy of ridiculing the Massachusetts senator to raise anew questions about Democratic leaders and their commitment to the troops. The highly coordinated White House effort came as Republicans sought to shift the focus away from an unpopular war and GOP scandals that are putting their congressional majorities at risk.
The controversy erupted after Kerry told a California audience on Monday: "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. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Yesterday, Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the American Legion and many GOP candidates pounced on the comment from the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee to accuse him of insulting U.S. troops. The president said Kerry owes service members an apology — echoing a parade of prominent Republicans who criticized the Massachusetts Democrat throughout the day.
After reading Kerry's comments to a GOP audience in Georgia, Bush said Kerry's statement was "insulting and it is shameful. The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave, and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology." The White House tipped off the networks to when Bush would attack Kerry, so the comments could be carried live and make the evening news.
In his defense, Kerry said that his comment was a "botched joke" and that he was referring to Bush's intellect, not that of American military personnel serving in Iraq.
They quote an unnamed Democratic strategist as saying:
The strategist, who would not discuss internal strategy on the record, said the Kerry comments are an unnecessary distraction but would soon be forgotten. Democrats, who faulted Kerry for failing to respond forcefully enough two years ago, said the senator fell into a GOP trap of debating Democratic support for the troops instead of Bush's management of the war.
Now that little bit of wishful thinking may just be spin or it may reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the damage this did. I do not think this is going to change all that many minds in the ranks of the Democrats. No, the damage here is that all the effort Dems have expended to try to suppress the conservative votes has been undone. Further it will damage the Dems with independents and may, likely will in fact, suppress turnout from that group that the Dems needed. That's how I read this one, we'll know who's right in less than a week.
IT’S LIKE DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago at Haahvard we had an investigation at which over 150 high school discharged, and many very highly functioning for their social class, veterans testified to educational crimes committed which led to their re-enlistment in the military. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen at Haahvard – the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in the military. They relived the absolute horror of how this country, in a sense, has reduced them to lazy do-nothings, ill-educated in even the simplest social graces, and not worthy of the respect of their elite-university-educated betters.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped the English language by using “effect” when they should have used “affect,” cut off participles and dangled them, taped wires from portable telephones with duct tape and turned on the power, cut limbs off trees with gas-powered, environment-destroying chain saws, blown 5th period science classes, randomly shot pool at the corner bar, raised children in fashion reminiscent of Ward and June Cleaver, shot photos of cattle and dogs for fun with disposable cameras bought at Wal-Mart, poisoned polite dinner conversations by using the wrong fork, and generally ravaged my country’s popularity in France and the Palestinian territories in addition to the normal ravage of Nascar-loving rednecks and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied capitalist pig economic power of this country.
We call this investigation the Rabid Right-Wing Soldier Investigation.
– Senator John Kerry (D-MA), testifying at Pasadena City College, October 31, 2006
(as interpreted by x_dhimmi)
That was a thing of beauty.
Who cares? Kerry isn’t running for anything this year. How does this help Republican candidates get their message out in this last week?
Vote for me because John Kerry said something either stupid or badly!
I don’t get it. It might hurt Kerry if he runs again but that’s it. Otherwise it’s a waste of a news cycle for trailing candidates.
Thanks for dropping by with the talking point, Ed. But maybe you should take a look at what the House and Senate campaign committees think. They think it hurts.
Well we’ll know next week. You willing to put money up on the GOP holding the House?
Actually, I don’t gamble. I do vote, however.
And voting for some of these bozos on either side of the aisle can definitely be a losing bet at times.
It is a known strategy of the Dems to try and “nationalize” this election. Even in my state (New Mexico), the ads from the DNC basically show Heather Wilson and George Bush together, trying to get people to associate the two, hoping that people who hate or mistrust George Bush will thus start hating or mistrusting Wilson. But Wilson’s campaign has kept it local referring to her opponent’s short-comings, and pointing out what she has done for New Mexico.
The DNC is apparently doing that in a lot of races, but the Republicans are trying to keep it local.
Thus, when a Democrat says something so incredibly stupid, especially a really powerful Democrat like Kerry, the net effect will be to damage the Democratic party, since their platform seems to be, “Vote for us! We are not George Bush!”
Besides, Ed, it is a federal crime to vote on the outcome of an election.