What many people are asking themselves is: will Kerry’s remarks have an impact on the coming elections in the US for Congress. I think that Joe and commenters here at TMV made some good points: it will – most likely – not have a great impact on independents but one of the other problems for the GOP is / was that it was not able to rally its base. John Kerry’s remarks, however, might provide the GOP with an opportunity of doing so.
Personally, I do not consider that to be ‘wrong’: John Kerry made an idiotic ‘joke’. In politics one should choose one’s words very careful: he either did not or he thought he could get away with it. My view, after watching the video at Hot Air and reading up on this ‘controversy’ is that, indeed, it was a failed joke. He was making fun of Bush, not of the army. Assuming he misspoke: it was still a stupid mistake. A joke like that is tricky (and highly arrogant by the way): leave one word out of it (‘us’ in this case) and you’re saying something that can be disastrous for you and your party -> as happened with John Kerry.
Anyway, the AP reports:
Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey cautiously defended Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday, saying controversial remarks he made about troops in Iraq were a mistake that his Republican opponent was trying to use to revive a desperate campaign.
Kerry had been scheduled to stump for Casey, but changed his schedule amid controversy over comments in which he said people unable to succeed in the U.S. educational system would likely “get stuck in Iraq.”
“He botched a joke. He was honest about a mistake that he made,” Casey said after speaking to several hundred students in a packed auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania. “He didn’t make a mistake like this president did” with a failed strategy in Iraq.
[…]
The decision to call off the Kerry campaign event was made by the Massachusetts senator, not Casey, both camps said.“We made a decision not to allow the Republican hate machine to use Democratic candidates as proxies in their distorted spin war,” said David Wade, a Kerry spokesman, in a statement.
Well, that seems to be the right decision to me. John Kerry should lay low for a while. From a Democratic perspective at least until after the elections.
Rick Santorum – politically understandably, perhaps even rightfully – used Kerry’s remarks to attack Casey. The problem for Santorum, of course, is that he is a Republican and outspoken supporter of George W. Bush. He – generally at least – supports (just about) Bush’s entire Iraq policy, etc. Iraq is a mess, it will most likely escalate further and further until, presumably, Iraq will have fallen apart (in three parts) or until one sect grabs power and installs another dictatorship (or something like it).
John Kerry made a stupid mistake and one could link Kerry to Casey. But Kerry and – more importantly – Casey are, at least, not supporting an already failed strategy in Iraq. What’s more important I ask you?
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