A Shiny, New Paint Job
Charles Krauthammer unloads today on the amazing duplicity of John Edwards, a politician who has, quite literally, changed virtually every position he ever held in an effort to gain the presidency – or at least become a kingmaker. It is a long list of changed positions that Krauthammer reels off.
Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq War vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation.
– As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.
– As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.
– As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it "radically overhauled."
– As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it "a good bill … and I am pleased to support it." He now attacks it.
– As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.
Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.
Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an "epic struggle" against the great economic malefactors that "have literally," he assures us, "taken over the government." He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot's very latest.
Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the "cause of my life," the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father's knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he's telling. You must understand: This is not politics for him. "This fight is deeply personal to me. I've been engaged in it my whole life."
Others have noted the cynical hypocrisy of John Edwards, of course. When he speaks of two Americas, he neglects to point out that he owns a fair share of both of them. But it is interesting to see just how many things Edwards has disavowed and taken a different stance on. But the far left loves to be pandered to – and Edwards has been playing to that crowd. Krauthammer points out that true left-liberals like Russ Feingold find Edwards to be a complete phony.
Which is how the left likes its heroes, apparently.
By Mockinbird, January 25, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
Edwards is a semaphor for the Democrat party. I hope he gets the nomination.
By NortonPete, January 25, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
I recall someone tallied the amount of deaths Edwards was indirectly responsible for by suing and putting out of business many rural doctors.
Something like 250 people died while being transported to facilities that were a great distance from the previous local doctor who Edwards had sued out of existence.