Posted on 06/17/2004 10:13:33 AM PDT by mercator99
Now we know what John Kerry has been up to this spring. Other politicians, having wrapped up their party's nomination early in March, might have devoted those extra months to honing their stump speech, shaking down contributors and strategizing for the long slog to November.
Not Kerry. Kerry, it seems, spent the last three months begging Republican John McCain to run as his vice president. He didn't ask officially (whatever that means) but he asked seven times. "I don't want to formally ask because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?" an aide who ran messages between the two senators quoted Kerry's approach to The New York Times. Each time, each of seven times, McCain's answer was the same: an unequivocal no.
Hey, John, wanna be my veep?
No thanks.
I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that. So. Shall we print up some buttons?
No.
Come on, man. I need you.
Nope.
You're kidding! You know the Republicans will never nominate you for the presidency! They hate your ass!
Whatever. I said no.
Dude! Don't be like that. Yes is such an easy word to say. Say it.
Get a life, John. Don't contact me unless it's about legislation. Got it?
Look, I'll be honest. The CBS poll says you'll give me a 14-point boost if you join the team. I gotta have you. I can't take no for an answer.
No means no, John. No. No. No.
Hey, thanks, I appreciate it. I'll call a press conference for noon. Kerry-McCain 2004!
I'm getting a restraining order against you, you jowly bassett-hound-eyed freak!!!
Seven times. Has John Kerry lost his mind?
The last time Americans elected a cross-party ticket was 1796, and with good reason. President Adams, a Federalist, feuded over matters personal and political with vice president Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party. The resulting spectacle was so appalling that Congress amended the Constitution to minimize the chances of such a fiasco reoccurring.
Not since 1932 has it been so important for Democrats to win the presidency. George Bush, a dangerous, deranged demagogue, has got to go. Anybody But Bush: I coined the phrase, and I still mean it. But it would be the height of folly to brush off the implications of the Kerry-McCain dalliance. The Democratic nominee-apparent's judgment, and that of his advisors, has been grievously compromised.
Liberals believe that McCain is a soft-spoken moderate Republican. The shabby treatment he received in 2000 at the hands of Bush and Karl Rove, whose operatives falsely claimed that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter with an African-American hooker, earns him sympathy from the left. So does the maverick style he employed to push for campaign finance reform.
But McCain isn't what people think he is. "At the end of the day," said the chatty aide, "he's a Republican." His campaign finance reform banned soft money contributions, a much bigger source of funds for Democrats than Republicans. Later in 2000 he played Bush's bitch, campaigning for the man whose staffers had smeared him. By all accounts his understated tone quickly rises to accommodate a sharp temper. Most of all, McCain's Arizona constituents vote for him because his conservative politics match theirs.
"I am pro-life," McCain wrote on his 2000 campaign website. "I oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger. I support the constitutional amendment to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. [I will] curb the gratuitous violence in the media that is desensitizing our culture to violence. Bearing arms is a constitutionally protected right."
How could liberal voters support Kerry-McCain knowing that a pro-life, flag-burning-obsessed, pro-censorship gun nut was a heartbeat away from the big leather chair? Why should anyone trust a candidate or a party so uncertain about their principles that they're willing to sell them out for a short-term jump in the polls? Kerry should thank McCain for turning him down; in doing so a Republican may just have rescued the Democratic Party from suicidal oblivion.
Both parties, and Democrats in particular, are in trouble. The last few decades have witnessed a rise in ideological blurring. Aping the Republicans has made the Democratic Party less appealing to increasingly apathetic liberals. This has occurred during a period of unprecedented polarization, when swing voters have all but vanished. As I prescribe in my book "Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take American Back From the Right," the key to Democratic success this fall is motivating the long-neglected left-wing base. That means stronger, not weaker, party identification. Democratic Congressmen who vote along with the Republicans should be thrown out of the party. Democrats must act like Democrats. And you don't do that by nominating, or running with, Republicans.
(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right," out this week. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)
It would be nice if they acted like Americans once in a while.
I hate this snake. (Rall)
I should have put a semi-BARF alert on this one.
But some of the content is pretty funny - shows how empty the Democratic intellectual bank really is.
I should have put a semi-BARF alert on this one.
But some of the content is pretty funny - shows how empty the Democratic intellectual bank really is.
Please go further left, Kerry!...When you are already the most liberal Senator..how far does Kerry need to go?
Ted Rall is a hate filled jerk..
Further proof that if Kerry moves to the middle--which he must to have a prayer of winning--his real base, the party leftists will desert him.
Anybody But Bush: I coined the phrase
The purpose of this article is clearly to put pressure on Kerry NOT to pick McCain.
It would appear Rall is afraid he will...
How could liberal voters support Kerry-McCain knowing that a pro-life, flag-burning-obsessed, pro-censorship gun nut was a heartbeat away from the big leather chair? Why should anyone trust a candidate or a party so uncertain about their principles that they're willing to sell them out for a short-term jump in the polls?
My my my....how utterly inclusive of Teddy R.
Ted Rall derisively refers to his party's Presidential candidate as a "jowly, bassett-hound eyed freak." What wit.
I wish someone would explain to me where that deranged scribbler gets the idea the the Manchurian Candidate is a "Gun Nut?"
He's out for waiting periods, the banning of homeland defense rifles, and most insidious of all, the effective end of private gun sales through the regulation of gun shows.
Doesn't sound like a gun nut to me. Sounds like an appeaser.
On the other hand...maybe that makes him a good Democrat?
Rall and I agree. Everybody but liberals out of the Democrap Party will ensure them being out of power, out of the federal government indefinitely. The clever ones know that fuzzing the edges and outright lying is their only chance at the ring. Too bad they wont listen to morons like Ted Rall.
Dead wrong. First off, the Adams-Jefferson combination came about because of the Constitution's initial way of electing the president and vice-president in the Electoral College. That changed with the 12th Amendment.
We've had two genuine coalition tickets in our history, and both ended catastrophically.
In 1840, William Henry Harrison and the Whig Party brought on Virginia Gov. John Tyler, a disaffected anti-Jackson Democrat, as the vice-presidential candidate. Harrison died soon after the inauguration, and as president, Tyler began implementing Democratic policies. Henry Clay re-took the role of party leader, read Tyler out of the Whig Party, and the House went so far as to begin an impeachment inquiry. Tyler ended up being the most ineffectual president in our history until Jimmy Carter.
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party brought in a War Democrat, Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, to create a coalition ticket under the title of the Union Party. Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson found himself at war with congressional Republicans over Reconstruction, a battle that led to his impeachment.
Coalition tickets are a bad idea. The risk is too high.
McCain is a demoncRAT in Pubby clothing. He votes with the demoncRATS more than Pubbies. The only time he turns pubby is when he's wooing his constitutency.
Kerry's dangling McCain a carrot so that McCain won't clobber him on the campaign trail. Put their service records together and Kerry's on the losing end of the debate -- so try to get Kerry to not speak out against him.
TS
Just like Al Gore invented television, ice cream, and the wheel.
Pretty funny. The whole first part of the column proves that Kerry is a jackass, then the second part of the column says, well, we've got to elect this jackass anyway.
That's pretty much the basic Democrat position. It was their basic platform in 2000. It was their basic platform in 2002. And it's their basic platform now. No wonder Rall wants a patent on "Anybody but Bush." That's about as far as their teeny little intellects will take them.
After Kerry's fiasco being shot down by McCain, any pick for VP will come stutteringly short albeit somebody as boring as Gephardt, Edwards the trial lawyer totally lacking any Gravitas outside the courtroom or the dinasour Sam Nunn that would be a total turn-off to any liberal even slightly sympathetic to the anti-war movement.
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