[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Already Voted!

[Brad Haslett]

The 2006 election cycle is over for me - I voted. Let the chips fall where
they may!  This Kerry thing is overblown like everything is during an
election run-up, but, the guy is a first class pri$5k, nerd, uh, loser. The
donkeys have some talented people on board, they're just not hanging around
the fringes.  Evan Bayh, Richardson, Obama,  anyone?

Here's Professor Hanson's observations:





*Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Kerryism* [Victor Davis Hanson<%61u%74ho%72%40%76i%63t%6f%72h%61nson.c%6f%6d>
]

Kerry surely must be one of the saddest Democratic liabilities around. Some
afterthoughts about his latest gaffe, which is one of those rare glimpses
into an entire troubled ideology:

(1) How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and
divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth,
lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in
America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have
to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or
candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education.
Today, Democrats must be wondering why they have embraced an overrated empty
suit, and  ostracized a  real talent like Joe Lieberman.

(2) How could Kerry possibly claim that he was thinking of the uneducated in
the context of George Bush, who, after all, went to Harvard and Yale?

(3)     Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in
the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have
met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security
Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is
the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being
gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not in the ranks of the
military, but on our university campuses, where half-educated professors and
non-serious students killing time are ubiquitous. Personally, I'd wager the
intelligence of a Marine Corps private any day over the average D.C.
journalist.  Every naval officer I met at the USNA, without exception,
seemed brighter than John Kerry, whose "brilliance", after all, has managed
to offend millions of voters on the eve of a pivotal election. If the
Democrats lose, it will be almost painful to watch the recriminations
against Kerry fly.

(4)     This is not the first, but third, time he has denigrated soldiers in
the middle of a war-and there is a systematic theme: John Kerry's assumed
superior morality allows him to pass judgment from on high about supposedly
lesser folk who become tools of a suspect military: thus we go from
limb-loppers and Genghis' hordes to terrorists to dead-beats. The only
constant is that the haughtiness is always delivered in the same
sanctimonious, self-righteous, and patronizing tone.

(5)  The mea culpa that Democrats are blaming the war and not the warriors
is laughable after Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, and Kerry have collectively
compared American soldiers to Nazis, Pol Pot's killers, Stalinists,
terrorists, and Baathists.

(6)   The problem is that Kerry is not just a senator, but the most recent
presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and thus in some sense,
especially given the diminution of Howard Dean, the megaphone of the entire
party.

(7)      His pathetic clarification, as he blamed everyone from Tony Snow to
Rush Limbaugh, displayed the same Al Gore derangement syndrome, and thus
raises a larger question: what is it about George Bush that seems to reduce
once sober and experienced liberal pros to infantile ranting?

(8)       And why is the supposedly lame Bush so careful in speech, and the
self-acclaimed geniuses like a Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, or Howard Dean
serially spouting ever more stupidities? For all the Democrats' criticism of
George Bush, I can't think of a modern President who has so infrequently put
his foot in his public mouth, and, by the same token, can't think of any
opposition that on the eve of elections seems to have an almost pathological
death wish.

The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or
this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its
head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those
of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot
at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore,
Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at
being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of
their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while
providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry
Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to
wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.
Posted at 8:35 AM<http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmEzZGYwYzk0ZDE3YTM0NjY4MmY3Nzg3NDNjNzM5MjY=>

  <http://oasc03012.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/corner.nationalreview.com/post/645246749/x07/NatlRev/isi_august_2006/isi_oct_2006_jlb_ani.gif/34343132646365653435343864393930?>

<http://oasc03012.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/corner.nationalreview.com/post/2010131259/x08/default/empty.gif/34343132646365653435343864393930?>

<http://oasc03012.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/corner.nationalreview.com/post/1540480027/x09/NatlRev/nr_classifieds/classif_002_120.gif/34343132646365653435343864393930?>