Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
You act as though this was some principled stand. Bullshit. He needed cover to compete with Dean and this was a convenient way to get it. I'm not suggesting that the troops were ever in jeopardy. What I am suggesting is that Kerry's vote against the $87 million had no relation to the merits. He would have found a way to vote no, no matter what the package had been. So in that way, he chose Kerry over the troops.
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Even if we accept the premise here, the last sentence does not follow for the reasons that several people here have explained but which you are evidently too obtuse to understand. The troops were going to be funded in any event. The only question was how.
That said, you have evidently decided that Kerry is incapable of acting on principle, and instead is a craven political opportunist, and are willing to fit anything he does into that simple framework. He served two tours of duty on small boats in Vietnam -- opportunism! Led war protests -- opportunism! And so on, right down the line. Doubtless there's a grain of truth here, as there is with any politician, but hardly more so than with any other politician. And in this particular case, I'm just not seeing the Dean thing. I followed the primaries, and I don't remember this vote. Kerry beat Dean not by copying his opposition to the war on Iraq, but by pointing to his appeal to moderates (his so-called electability) and by reaching voters in Iowa on other issues (see the Oliphant piece). Which is to say that the simple template you insist on fitting Kerry's actions into fits especially poorly here.
