Right Wing Nut House

Most of us who follow politics more than casually have become inured to campaign gaffes like the one John Kerry fell into a couple of days ago. After all, implying that our troops in Iraq are stupid losers who who didn’t do their homework or work hard in school so that they could “avoid” military service (in an all-volunteer army?) had to have been some kind of misstatement - although the haughty disdain with which he uttered the remark and his subsequent refusal to apologize calls into question all of the ink spilled by his apologists that he was skewering the President of the United States rather than combat troops fighting and dying in the field.

I guess we’ll just have to take the Senator’s word for it that he botched a joke that no one has ever heard him tell. And considering Kerry’s own marks when he was in books compared to Bush, one wonders who the joke was on in the first place.

But we’ve now moved beyond the “campaign gaffe” stage of the story and into the “apology vigil” segment. When will The Great Man lower himself and humbly beg the voter’s pardon for misspeaking? My guess is sometime this morning a slightly more contrite but still defiant Kerry will appear before a bank of microphones and grudgingly acknowledge that his remark may have given offense. Apologizing for the incredibly vile personal attacks he unleashed in his angry statement yesterday may take a little longer - like when the nether regions experience a severe case of hellish cooling.

No matter. Party leaders have probably been on the phone with the Senator half the night pointing out that it is now no longer a question of what he said about the troops but rather his refusal to acknowledge his mistake that is driving the story. Every hour that goes by without a Kerry mea culpa lessens the level of sincerity the American people will take any apology or explanation by the Senator whenever it comes.

As he blundered with the Swift Boat Vets so too now The Arrogant One is blundering with this minor “slip of the tongue.” Not recognizing the damage being done to both his party and his reputation, Kerry is once again slow off the mark to respond to danger. Anyone see a pattern here? The Senator, always appearing to be conflicted about his service to the country during Viet Nam, seems equally conflicted about lancing a campaign boil that, at bottom, speaks to his bona fides as a loyal veteran of the armed forces. The Swift Vets questioned his honesty and courage. This latest kerfuffle questions his honesty and character. For it takes real character to recognize a mistake and apologize - something even Andrew Sullivan can see:

What Kerry said he must apologize for. Sooner rather than later. He may not have meant it the way it came out. That doesn’t matter. It’s wrong to talk about the military that way - wrong morally, empirically and ethically. And the way he said it can be construed as a patronizing snub to the men and women whose lives are on the line. It’s also dumb politically not to kill this off in one news cycle. Is Kerry not content to lose just one election? Does his enormous ego have to insist on losing two?

Sullivan refers to the question on desperate Republican minds today; how much will this affect the voting next Tuesday?

Not too damn much, I’m afraid. Where the story matters most - red state America - the imperiled Republican incumbents will hardly be able to “nationalize” their race into a referendum on Kerry or the Democrats and their real attitudes toward the troops. That dog ain’t hunting, not this late in the game. To many, it simply re-enforces people’s beliefs about the left and their disdain for America’s fighting men. And it appears the American people are willing to live with that just as long as it’s a Democrat bringing down the gavel when the House reconvenes in January.

At the same time, I disagree with John Cole and his buddy Kos that this is all a tempest in a teapot and not really an issue in the campaign:

Again, I wish Kerry had not made the remark (or phrased it better), but really, it changes nothing. The Republican party has no plan for Iraq other than rhetorical shifts, their policies are not constructed or implemented to actually accomplish anything but rather to maintain Congressional power, and we all will be better off if the GOP is swept out of power. The Republicans are corrupt, morally bankrupt, have no ideas, no principles, and are hoping upon hope that this latest distraction will help to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the bleeding they care about is at the polls and not the bleeding in Iraq.

Let’s crush their hopes.

Note: Also check out former Republican/still a conservative Cole’s anguished, whiny, nauseating, self pitying, screed here where he solemnly announces the Republican party has left him behind because all they’re interested in is power and politics.

Duh.

They are, after all, politicians who happen to be in the majority. Not being interested in being re-elected and maintaining their majority would constitute a form of political suicide that would truly be unique in the history of American politics. While Cole is correct in pointing out their malfeasance and incompetence, (I would add arrogance and an unhealthy disdain for the electorate), his self-serving, holier-than-thou shots at fellow bloggers who don’t quite see the world the way he does reveals the West Virginian to be a small minded, petulant man indeed. The GOP certainly does not deserve to be returned to majority status. But then, the Democrats don’t deserve anything except the utter and complete contempt of conservatives. Cole doesn’t like the fact that elections are about choices. Well, as I’ve written before, if it comes down to a choice between Republicans and Democrats, give me the side that doesn’t put “The War on Terror” in quotation marks and spread vicious lies about stolen elections and wars for oil.

As I said, read the whole thing. Just make sure you have a barf bag handy.

Kos, like Cole, sees Much Ado About Nothing:

Kerry responded perfectly. Perhaps not in a way that the DC wise men would approve, those Gang of 500 fools who have enabled this administration’s disasters at home and abroad.

Perhaps not in a way that will appease the 101st Fighting Keyboardists and their acolytes who would rather talk tough than actually show genuine courage by enlisting in the armed forces.

And sure, not in a way that will appease Republicans hoping to find anything to desperately detract from their crappy policies, crappy candidates, and lie- and hate-filled campaigns.

Yeah, those people won’t be happy with Kerry’s response.

But in this case, Kerry responded the right way. Not by bowing to the full blast of the right wing noise machine, but by standing up to it on behalf of our troops, our nation, and the truth.

As I said yesterday, the netnuts can’t see the practical benefits of a Kerry apology through the veil of their own hate. They are cheering him on to destruction because his childish name calling and anger against his detractors mirrors perfectly their own feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness which expresses itself sometimes in wild conspiracy theories but more often in simple, direct, malignant loathing of conservatives.

Not to be outdone in the hysterical denunciations of the right department, MSNBC’s Keith Olberman rises to the occasion:

Senator John Kerry has, in essence, called out President Bush for not being smart, not studying, and being intellectually lazy. And the President and his minions have replied by demanding that Kerry apologize — to the troops in Iraq. Kerry called them stupid, and they were too stupid to know he called them stupid. Our fifth story in the Countdown, to top his own original remarkable comments and the administration’s equally remarkable missing of the point, intentional or otherwise, there is also Kerry’s response, blistering with phrases like ‘crazy,’ ’stuffed suit,’ ‘lied,’ ‘lie,’ ‘lying,’ ‘Republican hacks,’ ‘right-wing nut jobs,’ and ‘doughy.’ We begin where the story did at yesterday’s rally for the Democratic candidate for governor of California. Senator Kerry charming the college-age crowd with tales of surfing before segueing into a series of one-liners about his former opponent in the 2004 race for the White House, Mr. Bush.”

Yes, “charming” indeed.

One of the shrewdest political observers in the media, Time Magazine’s Karen Tumulty sums up Kerry’s situation nicely:

His initial impulse, predictably enough, was to fight back against the criticism. He didn’t want to fall again into what turned out to be the biggest trap of 2004, when he failed to understand that a relatively small ad buy from a group that no one had ever heard of could be more damaging than he imagined. He was determined not to be “swift-boated” again. So he declared: “If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the President and his failed team and a Republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp — rubber-stamp policies that have done injury to our troops and to their families.” But even Rand Beers, his national security adviser in the 2004 campaign, said: “It’s unfortunate that Senator Kerry misspoke. No one who has ever been in combat would intentionally impugn our brave troops.”

In other words, Kerry has managed on the eve of what could be a watershed election to remind pretty much everyone what it was they didn’t like about the Democrats, and especially what they didn’t like about him. It might have made more sense just to say he was sorry — for once to get ahead of a mistake, instead of trying to compensate for it the next time.

Kerry will buckle today, bowing to the enormous pressure his friends in the party will place on him to offer some sort of apologia for his “joke.” The media will be satisfied no matter what he says as long as the word “sorry” is stuck in the statement somewhere. Even if it’s buried, they will be drawn to it like moths to a porch light and trumpet the Senator’s “sincerity” to the skies.

And the world will begin to turn again, the sun will set in the west, and Republican chances for maintaining control of the House and Senate will remain exactly as they were before the words of disparagement left the Senator’s mouth.

In other words, Nancy Pelosi and probably Harry Reid can resume packing. They’re movin’ on up to the majority side…

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey points to a general tip-toeing away from Kerry by Democrats running for office as one congressional candidate from Iowa has already cancelled a Kerry appearance:

Will we see more of this? Kerry has scheduled events here in Minnesota for Tim Walz and a party-building event for the DFL (Minnesota’s Democrats) today. Tonight he goes to Pennsylvania to campaign for Bob Casey, Jr, and the Braley campaign event was scheduled for tomorrow.

Will Walz withdraw his invitation to Kerry as well? Will Casey?

Only if the Senator keeps this story alive for another day by not admitting his mistake. Ed’s gut feeling about Kerry’s losing an opportunity to close out the story quickly is spot on.