Salon: Kerry's vindication

[whometense]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/06/03/kerry/index.html

A flip-flop from Bush on North Korea?

John Kerry would surely prefer to have been elected last November than vindicated this June, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. And on at least one front this week, what Kerry can get is some sense that he was right and George W. Bush was wrong on a serious foreign policy matter.

The matter: North Korea. In his first debate with Bush, Kerry vowed to begin bilateral discussions between North Korea and the United States. Bush's response: "I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that. We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves."

So what is the Bush administration saying now? According to the New York Times, senior Bush administration officials say that the deadlock in the six-way talks -- a deadlock that began last June, well before the presidential debates -- is untenable and that the United States needs to find "a new strategy to persuade the Koreans to disarm." "In a change that reflects a failure of the present policy," the Times said earlier this week, "some officials say that they will no longer rely on China to sway the North Koreans" because they "now realize" that China "may never be willing to use its leverage over North Korea."

Score one for the junior senator from Massachusetts. And while it isn't vindication, exactly, Kerry can also take some kind of bemused comfort in the comments of Vice President Dick Cheney this week. During the campaign, the Republicans went ballistic on Kerry after he said that he'd substantially reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by 2008. The GOP accused Kerry of having a "cut and run" policy on Iraq, of emboldening the insurgents by suggesting that they merely had to "wait out" U.S. troops.

And what did Cheney say this week? When Larry King asked him if he thought there would be a substantial reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq by 2008, Cheney said: "I do."

-- Tim Grieve

[karynnj]

1. Kerry was right on Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, WMD profliferation,

Bush and Cheney were wrong on all five. (Bush gave the right answer on proliferation, but Bolton didn't prepare for the coference. Plus he deserves an "F" because his answer was copied from Kerry.) Now, why did the Bush administration want the Terorism and International Affairs debate first. With all these admissions, Kerry was even better than we all thought.

I'm getting really annoyed by GWB's annual comments about being a "C" student. Maybe, next time people will realize intelligence is a virtue.

[Dr Ron]

2. Repubican Flip Flops

These flip flops from Bush and Cheney aren't the only Republican flip flops today. Mitt Romney has bee outed as the real Masschusetts flip flopper:

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=998

[TayTay]

3. What a piece of work he is.

Romney should buy a frickin clue. He doesn't have a chance to be President. This obvious positional sleight-of-hands is just disgusting. At this point, I don't even see him being re-elected Governor.

That would be good news for every Dem in MA, especially the tall ones who want to advance to the big white house down the street and don't want idiots like Mittens back home doing things to undermine them.

[Dr Ron]

4. I saw a favorable mention of Romney's chances today

I believe it was on First Read or The Note, but somewhere in the mainstream media I saw a brief item on 2008 contenders. They mentioned Romney might do the best of the Republican "outsiders" by winning in New Hampshire.

obviously any prediction written today means very little. However I never really took Romney seriously as a contender, and was surprised to see one media source put his chances above several others.

Hey, if W can become President, we know any fool can.

[ginnyinWI]

5. hm, picture it

A MA senator and a MA governor compete for the presidency. How many Southerners' heads would explode? :crazy:

[TayTay]

7. That would be delicious

Especially since they are polar opposites. Mittens is dumb as a post, dishonest and a political opportunist who would do or say anything to get elected. I have no idea why even Rethugs would want to vote for someone who shows every indication of turning around and stabbing them in the back as soon as he is safely elected and feels like a little back-stabbing to make his day complete.

He is a despicable, lying, two-faced son of a bitch. I have no idea what he is doing in Massachusetts as he is just wrong for this this state. (I hate to wish him back to some other place as the chances are the inhabitants of that same other place don't deserve him either. No one north of hell does.)

I think Mittens has no clue how many willing Massholes would invade NH at primary time for the sole pleasure of bad mouthing him to the Granite State voters. Payback of this nature would bring me distinct pleasure, as he did it to Kerry. I would derive more personal satisfaction from torpedoing his plans than from nearly anything else. (Ahm, did I ever mention that politics is not all sweetness and light and that sometimes it's about payback?)

[whometense]

8. WHERE DO I SIGN UP??

I think Mittens has no clue how many willing Massholes would invade NH at primary time for the sole pleasure of bad mouthing him to the Granite State voters. Payback of this nature would bring me distinct pleasure, as he did it to Kerry. I would derive more personal satisfaction from torpedoing his plans than from nearly anything else. (Ahm, did I ever mention that politics is not all sweetness and light and that sometimes it's about payback?)

The prospect makes me giddy with vicious delight.

[TayTay]

9. Oh please, you just know this is coming

Are we not Mass DEms? Is payback not in our blood? I have already begun this. I do most of my shopping, car repair work and so forth in good old Nashua or Hudson. Every single time I talk to a possible NH primary voter I mention how awful the Rethug Gov of MA is and how much of a liar and a regressive bastard he is. It kind of makes my day.

[karynnj]

14. You already have your own grassroots action

I'm very impressed.

[Dr Ron]

11. Deja vu

"dumb as a post, dishonest and a political opportunist who would do or say anything to get elected. . . He is a despicable, lying, two-faced son of a bitch."

We've already done that once--having Kerry run against someone with this description.

[rox63]

6. Most of the country has no idea...

...what a lying (but slick) sack-o-sh*t Mittens is. We Massholes know all about it, and we should tell the world. At this point, I don't think Mittens could get elected dog-catcher here, especially after all the trash talk he's been spreading about our state. He ran as a moderate, but he really just another neo-con bastard.

Hmm, you think I'm just a little bitter maybe?

[ginnyinWI]

10. it seems strange to me, being an "outsider",

that you guys in MA could even elect a republican--what's the story on that?? Even WI has a Dem governor, and we are very light blue. Our Gov. Doyle seems to be holding his own with our repub state legislature, blithely vetoing their idiotic bills--like the cat-killing thing.

[rox63]

12. We make up for it in the legislature

MA has one of the most heavily Democratic state legislatures in the country. I think we've been electing rethug governors as a way to keep some sort of balance. If the governor tried to pass something that was out of our (heavily Dem) mainstream, he'd get slapped down in the house and senate. Until Mittens, they were generally moderate rethugs. Hell, Weld would have been considered a liberal Dem in a lot of other states. Mittens lied when he campaigned as a moderate, and I think the voters here have finally woken up to that fact.

[TayTay]

13. True dat! Plus the Mass Dems are unorganized.

The little-known secret about Mass Dems is that they are unorganized. The local races depend on the heavily Democratic local organizations to get the vote out. The statewide party cannot seem to get beyond the in-fighting between the moderate and liberal wings of the party.

Trying to organize Mass Dems is a daunting task. The libs don't trust organization because it might be an oppressive fascist plot hatched against them by the conservatives. The moderate don't trust the libs because they are flighty and talk about issues that the rank-and-file don't really care about. The gubernatorial races engender hard feelings that linger, sort of like the last Pres primaries did. The libs want a knight errant to come in and champion the lib cause. There are no 100% pure candidates and there never will be. There are only humans. So every time one of those humans does something that isn't 100% pure, the left gets a huge hissy fit and screams about those folks abandoning them. (The left can be so unrealistic about actual politics which is about compromise. Compromise is not the pact with Satan that so many lefties make it out to be. Sometimes compromise is the only way to get what you want.)

Anyway, the libs get gubernatorial candidates that it doesn't really like and can't seem to get behind. It buys the Rethug talking points about said candidate being a tool of 'the Beacon Hill insiders.' The Dems shoot their own by either not really showing up to do GOTV or by sitting home and basking in their own moral purity and not bothering to do the actual work of getting a Dem elected. (This is excused by saying that the libs were 'true to their principles.' You can be true to your principles and lose. I don't see the upside of that, but I am only 1/2 Mass lib. The other half believes in real politic.)

Best line at the MA Dem convention, "How do other states where Democrats have to be organized in order to get elected do it?" Democrats in Massachusetts control 87% of the seats in the state legislature, 100% of the congressional delegation and haven't had the Gov's seat for 16 years. And the MA Dem party has deep, deep problems that this seeming success has only made worse.

[ginnyinWI]

15. interesting political climate you've got there

I'm going to be getting more informed about WI politics, too--I'm sure there are some interesting fights going on.

It must be hard to be a moderate repub unless you have a lot of spine. The pressure to kiss up to Bushco must be very tempting.