Reply #4: Please give it a rest

[karynnj]

If there were Obama supporters trashing Kerry, the first question would be whether the things they were criticizing were truthful. It is entirely fair for them to disagree with a position of his - or to disagree with Obama himself, even as they support Obama. But, I have not seen any people I identify as Obama supporters attacking Senator Kerry.

In the last few posts that centered on Kerry, the FIRST person to mention this was you - on many threads, it was ONLY in response to you that anyone else mentioned it. Incidentally, Kerry addressed that in his 2008 speech at the convention when he spoke of McCain's flip flops and Bob Shrum wrote a wonderful oped that defended that Kerry was consistent and Romney a shape-shifter.

Kerry and Romney have little in common except central-casting presidential jawlines. In 2004, Kerry inartfully and too memorably said he voted for $87 billion supplemental appropriation for operations in Iraq before voting against it. It was a self-inflicted wound, the memorable trigger for an instant and persistent attack. But it was no flip-flop. Kerry had voted to fund the money so long as Republicans paid for it by rescinding one one-hundredth of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The flip-flop attacks on Kerry’s record were all like this, based on distortions like Senate votes stripped of context. They had to be, because Kerry’s real record is a lifetime of consistency.

But consistency and Romney don’t belong in the same sentence. That’s why using the Bush-Cheney playbook against him isn’t just an insult to Kerry; it’s an insult to flip-flopping. Romney isn’t a flip-flopper; he’s a shape-shifter.

In contrast, Kerry’s principled record reaches all the way back to his call to end the Vietnam War, an act of moral clarity summed up in a compelling challenge still quoted today: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?’’


The only pearl of moral wisdom Romney has offered thus far came in a recent debate: “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals!’’

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2011/11/23/not-flip-flopper-shape-shifter/KQazVVi6dH67JSPWqcVcoK/story.html