Sen. John Kerry's remark

By now, I expect that pretty much everyone, or at least everyone who reads this blog, has heard about John Kerry's remark to students at Pasadena City College in California, and the Republican uproar over it.

The remark at the center of the hubbub:

"You know education, if you make the most of it, and you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

I have to admit that when I first read a report of the remark, before the Republican angst set in, my first thought was "Ooooh. Bush isn't going to like being zinged like that." The whole "make an effort to be smart" part is a scathing indictment of Bush's (and the Republicans'!) disdain of intelligence (the 'IQ' variety, not the 'falsified pretext for war' variety).

The Republicans, led by George Bush and his mouthpiece Tony Snow, immediately tried to turn this into a campaign talking point.

Our own JD Hayworth (only have to say that for one more week! Yes!!) chimed in with a press release calling on his challenger, Harry Mitchell, to denounce the comments.

Harry is enough of a gentleman that he may just do that; however, JD should worry about getting what he wishes for.

How about this for a (satirical) press release???

"Today, Harry Mitchell called on Senator John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran and national hero, to moderate his comments. Mitchell stated that even when the supporting evidence is overwhelming, it's unseemly for a senior elected official to question the President's intellectual capacity."

More seriously, John Kerry immediately fought back. In his own press release, Kerry came out fiercely -

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

{snip}

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it.

{snip}

No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

The Rep spin machine has spent all day, and will probably spend the next week, calling Kerry's statement an "insult" to our servicemen and women.

Let 'em.

Squib aka TwistedOreo at Shooting in the Dark is right.

If the Republicans want to spend the next week talking about the War in Iraq, one of their biggest failures, the Democrats damn sure shouldn't try to stop them.