Reply #31: No, it was Kerry. [View All]

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

From his MTP appearance:

MR. RUSSERT: But there’s a lot of discussion in the ’90s about you trying to cast off some of the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party, being described as a New Democrat. What caught a lot of people’s attention was the 1994 election, when the Republicans won both houses of Congress, Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House, and this is what you told the Boston Herald: “Sen. John F. Kerry broke from Democratic Party ranks, saying he was ‘delighted’ by the GOP election purge and laying the blame on the doorstep of President Clinton and arrogant House leaders. ...‘I want this change. I’m delighted with seeing an institutional shakeup because I think we need one,’ Kerry said in a Herald interview. ‘The Democrats have articulated in the last two years a very poor agenda. It’s hard for me to believe that some of these guys could have been as either arrogant or obtuse as to not know where the American people were coming from.’ Kerry deliberately set himself apart from Kennedy...He said Kennedy and Clinton’s insistence on pushing health care reform was a major cause of the Democratic Party’s problems
at the polls. When told his calls for ‘change’ did not match Kennedy’s re-election rhetoric, Kerry smiled and said: ‘I’m amazed people didn’t pick up on it.’”
MR. RUSSERT: You were clearly separating yourself from Clinton and from Kennedy on the issue of health care...
SEN. KERRY: I was upset, Tim.


http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/960385.asp