Posted on 05/07/2006 5:47:39 AM PDT by madprof98
Poor Patrick.
It's not what people would be expected to say about a rich kid who sailed into a House seat on the strength of his family name.
But in Washington, where politics is both profession and blood sport, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) has long been seen as a figure of sadness.
"Most people feel sorry for him because he's obviously troubled," said a veteran Democratic consultant after the 38-year-old Kennedy announced his return to drug rehab after crashing his car on Capitol Hill.
"He walks around as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders," the consultant said. "He's had these unfortunate brushes with the law and with addiction. He came to Congress with a tremendous amount of promise, and it hasn't really worked out for him."
Kennedy was just 21 and still a student at Providence College when he was first elected to the Rhode Island Legislature in 1988.
He was barely 26 - not many years past his drug and alcohol treatment and his testimony in cousin William Kennedy Smith's 1991 Palm Beach rape trial - when he ran for the open seat from Rhode Island's 1st District. All the leading lights of America's royal family - including his powerful father, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, and cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. - turned out to secure him a landslide victory.
Kennedy's decade in the House has been marked by prodigious fund-raising, occasionally bad behavior (such as shoving an African-American airport security worker) and a tendency to blurt out things he quickly regrets. "I don't need Bush's tax cut," Kennedy shouted to a shocked crowd of young Democrats in 2003. "I have never worked a f-----g day in my life."
The Democratic operative said: "He's like the boss' son who sort of falls into the family business and doesn't really belong."
But another D.C. Democrat, who has worked closely with Kennedy, was more sympathetic. "I felt he has always been striving to live up to people's expectations of what a Kennedy should be. The weight of that must be tremendous."
Originally published on May 7, 2006
Unreal.
... boo hoo... boo hoo.
Patches isn't the brightest bulb in the box. That's why people feel sorry for him. He's a dope. (Read any column about Patches by Howie Carr, who also calls Wm. Kennedy Smith, 'Sluggo'.)
Well my question is this:
"Are the people of Rhode Island going to keep electing him like Mass-a-chits have done with the swimmer?"
Hey... His father got away with murder. Why shouldn't he?
Who thought that?
He needs to find another job.
Looks like he's nailed it.
To think how this would have hurt poor Rose.
To lose three boys before their time.
And the grandchildren having such problems.
This poor family has suffered so.
It's a sin, I tell ya.
Debauchery, treachery, and a lack of honor.
And whose fault is that...?"
>>not many years past his drug and alcohol treatment and his testimony in cousin William Kennedy Smith's 1991 Palm Beach rape trial
I think this is when Howie Carr started calling him Patches.
It was important that he give his testimony to get his cousin off those charges: Patches, I'm depending on you son, to pull the family through. My son, it's all left up to you.
He hasn't filed papers yet but a guy named Edmund Leather announced on a RI radio talk show that he's running against Patches (announced the day BEFORE the incident)
2004:"About 40 Republicans, including East Providence-resident Edmund Leather, boarded a bus to Derry, N.H., last weekend to volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign."
He's never had a job.
I wonder if these liberals realize just how hypocritical they sound
I wonder what the reaction from the MSM would be if a Republican congressman did the same thing as Kennedy did.
Actually, I don't wonder at all. I know the liberal pundits would be demanding a that the congressman resign and a full blown investigation of the incident if the congressman in question would have been a Republican.
they are all idiots. The Kennedys are mostly screw ups. Gained their wealth with unsavory activities, and now people keep admiring them like they are something special.
I was told they paid very Little Inheritance tax on the estate when the old man died.
Looks to me like he has met those expectations.
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