http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/02/12/john_kerrys_shifting_stands/IN THE 2004 presidential field, there is a candidate for nearly every point of view. His name is John Kerry.
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Here's how it works: Say you're in favor of capital punishment for terrorists. Well, so is Kerry. "I am for the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists have declared war on your country," he said in December 2002. "I support killing people who declare war on our country."
But if you're opposed to capital punishment even for terrorists, that's OK -- Kerry is too! Between 1989 and 1993, he voted at least three times to exempt terrorists from the death penalty. In a debate with former governor William Weld, his opponent in the 1996 Senate race, Kerry scorned the idea of executing terrorists. Anti-death penalty nations would refuse to extradite them to the United States, he said. "Your policy," he told Weld, "would amount to a terrorist protection policy. Mine would put them in jail."
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Take the Patriot Act. Kerry condemns it fiercely as the stuff of a "knock-in-the-night" police state. He vows "to end the era of John Ashcroft" by "replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time."
So does that mean he voted against it in 2001? Au contraire! Kerry voted for the law -- parts of which he originally wrote. He singled out its money-laundering sections for particular praise but declared that he was "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the antiterrorism legislation as a whole."
Bottom line, then: Is Kerry for or against the Patriot Act? Absolutely.
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So on the one hand, he voted against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, calling the law "fundamentally ugly" and "legislative gay-bashing." On the other hand, he says he's against same-sex marriage and refused to condemn a DOMA-like amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution. (At one point last week, he left open the possibility of endorsing it.) On the other other hand, he supports civil unions -- same-sex marriage in all but name. And on yet another other hand, he claims to "have the same position Vice President Dick Cheney has." (Cheney's view is that "different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate.")
Where Kerry will ultimately come down on this issue is anybody's guess. But it's safe to say that wherever you come down, he'll be able to claim he was there all along.