Deconstructing Kerry

Nov. 2, 2006 — -- By now, you no doubt know about the Kerry kerfuffle.

On Monday, in front of a group of college students in Pasadena, Calif., former 2003 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., joked about education and Iraq.

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

Kerry said later that he meant to be impugn the intelligence of the president who got the nation stuck in Iraq, not the soldiers who are there.

That didn't matter, though, to the Republicans who seemed anxious to voice a defense of the troops against what they called an attack from Kerry rather than talk about how the war in Iraq was progressing.

President Bush joined the fray, saying in Georgia Tuesday night that "the senator from Massachusetts owes [the troops] an apology."

Members of the Bush administration were dispatched Wednesday to continue to fan the flames of the controversy.

Campaigning in Montana Wednesday night, Vice President Dick Cheney told a cheering crowd that "Senator Kerry said he was just making a joke, and he botched it up. I guess we didn't get the nuance."

Alluding to Kerry's infamous line that he had voted in favor of $87 billion for U.S. troops before he voted against it, Cheney said that Kerry "was for the joke before he was against it."

As Kerry combatively refused to apologize, giving a combative news conference in Seattle and impugning "despicable Republicans" for attacking him.

He personally attacked White House spokesman Tony Snow as a "stuffed suit … mouthpiece" and talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh as "doughy," making the story bigger and bigger.

Kerry was all but ostracized by his own party.

Baron Hill, a Democratic congressional candidate in Indiana, returned a Kerry campaign contribution.

Kerry canceled campaign events with three Democratic candidates on Wednesday. Leaders of his own party threw him under the proverbial bus.

"I disagree with Sen. Kerry's remarks, but he is not on the ballot," said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.