John Kerry: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
Yes, you're reading this right. Kerry told a college crowd that they should study hard and get a good education--or end up like losers in the military. This coming from a man who once wanted to command these men and women from the White House. Then again, Kerry has never been one to hide his contempt for the armed forces. Will the national Democrats like Ned Lamont and Bob Casey Jr. dispute Kerry's claim that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines don't have what it takes to succeed in life? More locally, will Stephanie Herseth denounce Kerry's claim?
UPDATE: Kerry has made things worse. On the one hand, he claims the entire issue was engineered by "right-wing nut jobs," led by a "doughy Rush Limbaugh." Then later this afternoon he claimed it was a "mangled joke" aimed at President Bush. He can't have it both ways. This is, after all, the man who has always looked upon the armed forces with disdain: he called American troops rapists and murderers in his Senate testimony in 1971, and last year accused them of terrorizing Iraqi families on midnight raids. Finally, Austin Bay notes:
In the spare space of 24 hours Kerry has resurrected the Vietnam Syndrome –at least his and the left wing of the Democratic Party’s Vietnam (loser’s) Syndrome. This is stupid but particularly stupid in the last week of a national election. Doubly stupid in the midst of a long, grinding war. Kerry is trapped, in an odd sort of amber. He’s stuck on stupid and stuck in the past simultaneously. John Kerry, the stegosaurus of American politics. (Okay, I’m unfair to stegosaurs, they had backbones and spikes on their tails– but the drawing at the link is cute.)
Why didn’t Senator Kerry just apologize? “I’m sorry for what I said. I meant to crack a joke and it came out sounding like an insult to US troops. Forgive me. We owe our defenders so much.”
But we know why.
UPDATE: A Democratic Congressman told ABC: "I guess Kerry wasn't content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too." Bruce Braley, Democratic Congressional candidate of Iowa, is canceling a campaign event scheduled for later this week with Sen. Kerry.
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