Free Republic

Consider this "Notebook" item from TNR's March 25, 1991 issue, which ran under the headline "Same Senator, Same Constituent": "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war." --letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991] "Thank you...

VIETNAM ALLUSION TK: Monday I dwelled a bit on one of John Kerry's many yet-to-be-exploited-but-blindingly-obvious vulnerabilities: his vote on the 1991 Gulf war. I noted in that post that the vote could be potentially devastating to Kerry, not so much because it portrays him as soft on national security, but because it makes him look like he takes whichever side of whatever issue happens to be most politically advantageous. (Or, as Mickey Kaus would have it, whichever side he thinks is most politically advantageous, however wrong he turns out to be.) Turns out I was giving Kerry too much credit....