Burnt Orange Report

I wish this hadn't happened so soon. I was hoping we could get some good turnout to help Democrats win other local races, but now I'm afraid a good chunk of people may stay home.

I just hope Kerry will announce he has resigned from the Skull & Bones Society. I don't think I could vote for someone who is pledged to support fellow Bone members like G.W. Bush before he helps, say, the American public.

Byron is right. We had our process. A nominee has been selected. It is time to get behind him. We need a UNITED front to send Bush back home.

(I would say back home to Crawford, but we all know he will never retire to Crawford. It was all a PR stunt to "relocate" their anyway - make him look like a common Bubba. He will set up shop in Highland Park [Dallas] or more likely, River Oaks [Houston]).

Kerry it is.

I agree, Byron, Edwards was far more of a threat than Kerry. Not any more. Thanks :)

Sherk

Whew, at least now I can go home and finally cast my vote for Dean and not have to sweat it any more since it won't hurt Edwards or anything anymore.

Edwards out so soon. Man by the time my primary comes it'll be squat.

Anyway, I don't see how the skull and bones things matters since both people are members. I mean why should they support Bush if Kerry is also a member. That makes no sense. Anyway,

As I heard on the news, it's ABBa (Anyone But Bush) time.

Oh man now i have dancing queen in my head.

Yay! Dancing Queen.... turn it up.. hehe. Go Abba!

Seriously, I am disappointed that Edwards didn't have a chance to stick in there through the Texas primary. We would have been part of Super Tuesday had it not been for the GOP redistricting crap. Our turnout will be lower because of it. I don'r regret my vote for Edwards. I felt like he was the best choice for the nomination, and I still do. But the Democratic voters of America have decided... and I respect their decision, and I will join them in fighting for the next eight months to elect John Kerry our next President.

I agree that we should all unite behind the nominee. It is vitally important to ensure that Bush is not re-elected.

However, why caucus for Kerry? He is already assured the nomination. Why not caucus for Dean and try to keep the message going? Believe me, I am not advocating trying to have Dean run as an independent party or an any of that nonsense. I do think though, that a lot of "Dean delegates for Kerry" will show that the "take back America" movement is not dead and will help to keep Kerry on track on his style, if not positions.

From Dick Morris' column today:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19568.htm

"THE Democratic Party slit its throat last night, abandoning 12 years of pragmatism to indulge in a nominee who's very unlikely to win.

While John Edwards closed the gap that separated him from John Kerry, the front-loading of the nominating process proved too drastic to permit second thoughts. Once the Democratic voters had discarded Howard Dean and embraced Kerry, they did not have the dexterity to rethink Kerry in the light of the Edwards alternative.

Too bad for the Democrats: Edwards would have been a much stronger candidate in November than Kerry will be. He is not the extreme liberal that the front-runner is and has not had 20 years in the Senate to demonstrate how out of touch he is with American values and ideas"

I'm in a good mood today. Kerry was the man I wanted to get the nod before Dean imploded. After the "I have a Scream" speech, Dean was unelectable, so I wanted him, but Kerry was my first choice before that. Four more in '04.

Sherk

Sherk, you do know what Dick Morris does in his spare time, don't you? It wouldn't look very pretty on evangelsociety.org, lemme tell you.

As for the caucus, I'm with Karl-T and xerixes. You have the chance to support your candidate, without any concerns about strategy or anything else. There was a reason Dean earned your vote way back when (and a reason Kerry didn't); why not show your support regardless of Kerry's inevitable nomination?

I'm thankful to find that I'm not alone in my thinking about going ahead to caucus for Dean. With lower turnout now, it should make it marginally easier to do. So I don't really understand the whole "let me wipe my mind blank and become a non-thinking drone of the democratic nominee" as if there was no primary season. My concern is less with the nominee than it is with the message or policys that this party will stand for. So that's why I'm still going to vote and caucus for Dean.

I don't have a problem with people caucusing for Dean or whoever. As long as we all unite to vote for John Kerry in November. For me, I've decided to join the campaign today. For others... it will take longer. I respect that. We all need to make our own decisions on when to join the campaign when we see fit. I appreciate Dean's message, but I feel like it's time to unite behind John Kerry, and that's what I plan to do next Tuesday.

I'm with Karl-T--I am more confident about caucusing for Dean now. but I am going to put a little of my money away with every check, and hopefully will make a huge donation to the Kerry campaign. Kerry was my other choice, and am happy that he is the nominee. I don't agree that he was the candidate Bush and his cronies wanted all along--it's called a psych-out, folks. Conservatives are scared, and they should be.

KERRY 2004

We are united.
We are energized.
And we will not afraid to fight back.
......................................................................

BTW, it's interesting that Kerry is frequently seen with his buddies from the Vietnam War but I can't recall ever seeing the Flightsuit-in-Chief with other members of the "champagne battalion" of the Texas Air National Guard.

Brady,

I certainly agree that Morris is a man of less than upstanding moral behavior, to say the least. However, he is also, to put it mildly, a very good political strategist. He was the man who turned Clinton's image around after the 1994 Dem. rout, and got him re-elected (okay, he had to resign in August of '96, but it was still his overall strategy). So he might be scum, but he is smart scum, and worth listening to.

Sherk

Mr. Kerry's Path

PRESIDENT BUSH'S decision to run as a "war president" created a temptation for the Democratic Party to go down a misguided and ultimately self-destructive path. The opposition party might have decided to cast itself as the party of peace: to question whether the United States is at war, to accuse Mr. Bush of inflating the danger of terrorism for political gain, to demand an early withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and other overseas engagements. Some Democrats have indeed succumbed to those temptations. To his credit, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, has chosen a different path. In an address Friday, he accepted the premise that the United States faces a fundamental threat -- and accused Mr. Bush of being too soft in response. "I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the war on terror," Mr. Kerry said. "I believe he's done too little."

The fairness of that criticism will be a legitimate subject for campaign debate. Some counts of Mr. Kerry's indictment of the Bush administration strikes us as fair, some as off-base; in a number of cases, he espouses policies the Bush administration is following as if they were his invention. But before that debate gets into full gear, Mr. Kerry deserves credit for setting its terms as he has. In recent days, as his challenger Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) has run an increasingly pandering campaign, Mr. Kerry has begun to show some backbone. During their debate in Los Angeles on Thursday, for example, Mr. Kerry forthrightly defended his opposition to capital punishment; said plainly that pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq would be "disastrous"; and put at least some distance between his position and the protectionism snake oil Mr. Edwards is peddling. "I believe in trade, and I'm not going to run for president suggesting that America ought to bring a wall down on it," Mr. Kerry said.

His speech Friday further positioned Mr. Kerry for a serious challenge to the incumbent. He denied that as president he would allow allies to inhibit America's defense ("I will not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake") or that he would return to a law-enforcement-only approach to fighting terrorism ("I will not hesitate to order direct military action"). He warned that the war on terror "isn't just a manhunt. . . . We face a global jihadist movement of many groups . . . all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe." He promised a larger Army, a renewed commitment to the antiproliferation efforts of former senator Sam Nunn and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and increased support for human rights and democracy-building in Islamic countries. He promised better cooperation with allies, more aid for Afghanistan and more attention to homeland defense.

Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry has a record to defend, and his votes on military engagements, defense spending and other matters remain fair topics for debate. And Mr. Kerry left plenty of questions unanswered in last week's speech. He favored military action against "terrorist groups and their leaders" but didn't mention regimes that support terror; does he accept or reject that plank of the Bush Doctrine? He faulted Mr. Bush for allowing North Korea and Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, but didn't say what he would do about them. His prescription for homeland defense is heavy on Democratic pork (100,000 federally funded firefighters) with little sense of how he would set priorities.

But Mr. Kerry has laid a foundation that will allow him, in principle, to answer those questions. The United States is at war; the threat is existential. The debate he proposes to hold with Mr. Bush is over how best to meet that threat. That could make for a lively and constructive campaign, worthy of the first post-Sept. 11 election.

Sunday, February 29, 2004; Page B06
Washington Post

Globalist. Pork Spender. War supporter.
Just like we have now.