Kerry’s Position In a Nutshell
Both Atrios and Kos heartily approve of the Daily Howler’s concise version of Kerry’s war position :
KERRY?S POSITION: I voted to give President Bush the authority. Then President Bush f*cked it up.
Of course, Kerry used almost these exact same words when being interviewed last year :
Did you feel you were blindsided by Dean’s success?Well, not blindsided. I mean, when I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, “I’m against everything”? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.
Like I mentioned a few months back, I really like John Kerry when he’s relaxing and being himself. Maybe if he weren’t such a politician and would let his guard down a little more, people would see through all this flip-flopper bullshit.
6 comments
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Yeah, I’ve had to point out to quite a few conservatives that voting to give authorization to the president to go to war doesn’t equate to “voting for the war” and certainly doesn’t equate to agreeing with the way the war was done.
I guess it’s just easier to paint somebody as a flip-flopper when you decide where they satnd on issues for them.
Comment by dolphin — August 17, 2004 @ 4:10 pm
Well, dolphin, it’s obvious that the congress is deeply involved in the day to day operations of the government, not like the president who sets long term goals and broad guidelines for how to conducte the business of america.
So it’s gotta be John Kerrys fault, i heard he personally decided not to guard the WMD sites Colin Powell told the UN about. He eats babies too.
Comment by mdhatter — August 17, 2004 @ 9:07 pm
i think its great that all of us who called our representatives begging them not to vote for the resolution back in oct 2002 because we knew what it really meant and we knew what bush would do with it now are so eager to tow kerry’s line. this is bullshit. he voted for it strategicly cuz he knew he was running for president. plain and simple. as was said by a poster on this site, he was not misled by bush, he was misled by terry mccauliffe.
kerrys excuses for voting for this did not wash with the majority of the progressive community back then. hence, the popularity of howard dean. it does not wash now, either. if he was misled, then he could not see through what the majority of us could. that nievity does not excite me.
lets just acknowledge hes the same on bush ON THIS ISSUE and move on to issues where he whoops bush’s ass.
Comment by josh — August 18, 2004 @ 8:33 am
Josh is right. Kerry and Bush see eye-to-eye on Foreign Policy, differing only on some (important) tactical issues. Realistically, the presidency is always going to go to someone who holds a conventional position on foreign policy. The last place to try and change foreign policy is the white house.
Comment by Joe — August 18, 2004 @ 11:11 am
So if I give you “authority to fuck my wife” and then find out that you are banging her, I should be pissed off?
What the hell kind of cop out is “I voted for the autority to go to war…not for the war, itself.” The only reason it was up for a vote was to give W the go ahead and declare war.
Kerry much like Clinton tries to word things so he can have an out (or an in) regardless of the result. Just speak plain talk, it will go a lot further. No one wonders where Bush stands on issues.
Kerry stance in a nutshell? LMAO If you ever going to post kerry’s stance on anything you better type fast, odds are it will change before you get it posted!
4 More 4 W
Comment by jonathan — August 22, 2004 @ 12:06 am
Jonathan, did you not read the previous posts? And are you also completely unaware of the argumentum ad nauseam and straw man fallacies? Voting to allow authority to go to war in hopes of a skillful and speedy resolution is in no way contradictory to being upset when the war fails on both of these levels because of poor leadership.
Comment by GWB — September 25, 2004 @ 7:58 pm