Attacking John Kerry: The Games Begin

With Kerry emerging as the likely Democratic nominee, the volleys from the right are starting to fly. Case in point: Chris Horner's rather speculative piece on the National Review website today:

On January 24, before the first vote was cast in New Hampshire's Democratic primary, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) endorsed Senator John Kerry (D., Mass.) for president. Weeks earlier, in an entirely unrelated matter, the Heinz Family Foundation provided an "unrestricted-use" grant of a quarter million dollars to a group represented on the LCV board.

Senator Kerry is married to the very wealthy Teresa Heinz, who also sits on the board of numerous foundation and advocacy groups….The tax-exempt advocacy group LCV is expressly nonpartisan. Regardless, the top half of its website's home page is dedicated to the endorsement of Senator Kerry.

Correlation, as we all know, does not prove causation -- and Horner doesn't do his argument any favors by letting his rhetoric run wild. (At one point he describes The American Prospect as a "hard-left" magazine, which is kind of like calling Tucker Carlson a right-wing extremist.) But he raises an interesting point about the ways Heinz's money could quietly work on her husband's behalf, even if at the present he only has one example to point to. "It is fair to anticipate over the coming months," he writes, "…that each of these Heinz-funded groups will coincidentally make its own pitch for a Kerry presidency, though possibly not as fawningly as LCV. If it's too overt, you see, it gives the appearance of employing taxpayer-subsidized wealth to influence elections."

OK. That gives us something to keep an eye on. If the endorsements roll in as predicted, then Horner might be onto something -- especially if they appear before anyone wraps up the Democratic nomination. (None of these groups is going to back Bush, whether or not Teresa Heinz gives them money.) Otherwise, this is one volley that fell wide of its target.

Comments

[Gadfly]

Hah! Kerry is a piker compared to the Bush back-scratchers.

[NoStar]

With Kerry, the generic Democrat donkey looks suspiciously like the trademarked Disney donkey Eeyore. Disney lawyers will soon be hot on the campaign trail.

On the plus side, a recently discovered cache of "All the Way With JFK" bumperstickers that were printed and unused for the 1964 election will finally be put to use.

[The Lonewacko Blog]

The Lonewacko Blog has placed its speculative bets on an Edwards-Lieberman ticket. At that post, it linked to this article:

Teresa Heinz thinks that Hillary Clinton should have shot her husband for being unfaithful, that plastic surgery is essential, and that rabbit meat provides the best diet for children...

[Andrew]

Yeah, the games begin.

"Libertarians for Kerry" is shaping up!

[Dan]

one point he describes The American Prospect as a "hard-left" magazine, which is kind of like calling Tucker Carlson a right-wing extremist

Why is it unfair to call "The American Prospect" a "hard-left" magazine? It's not "The Nation", granted, but if somebody ever invented a test for left-wing sentiment, TAP would test as 99.5% pure. It's pretty uniformly hostile to "right-wing" ideas, unlike, say, "The New Republic".

Calling TAP a "hard-left" magazine is like calling Rush Limbaugh "hard-right". Yes, there are plenty of people further out on the fringes than Limbaugh and TAP, but they're both far removed from the political center.

[Jesse Walker]

In the traditional political spectrum, "hard left" is to the left of "left" which is to the left of "liberal." The phrase implies a Marxist-Leninist.

[dude]

The funniest bit so far was when Limbaugh went off on Kerry's war record.

Bob Kerry's war record.

I do hope the guys writing up the faxes at the RNC can keep the two guy straight. Not really.

[dlc]

Over at FrontPageMag they have started referring to Kerry as "French-Looking." Kind of sophmoric, but its a clever (and probably accurate) insult...

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11939

[Dan]

In the traditional political spectrum, "hard left" is to the left of "left" which is to the left of "liberal." The phrase implies a Marxist-Leninist.

Sheesh. Do you have to join the KKK to qualify as "hard-right", then?

I usually hear Marxists/Leninists as referred to as "fringe" or "lunatic" left, since they and their beliefs have essentially zero role in American political life these days and aren't taken seriously outside of college social sciences departments. "Hard Left" is Ralph Nader and other Green Party types.

[Don]

Under our Criminal Justice System, Martha says she's innocent and gets hit with a charge for lying. The system is going nuts.

Meanwhile, the feds lie a lot but usually seem to escape any kind of prosecution.

So we should rename the FBI. New name: the Federal Investigatory Bureau (FIB).

[dj of raleigh]

Ralph Nader and "Green Party" types are, by and large, Marxist/Leninists when it comes down to it.

Nader said that he would not run on the Green ticket if he ran.

[Jesse Walker]

I usually hear Marxists/Leninists as referred to as "fringe" or "lunatic" left, since they and their beliefs have essentially zero role in American political life these days and aren't taken seriously outside of college social sciences departments. "Hard Left" is Ralph Nader and other Green Party types.

Actually, "hard left" implies the fringe (as does "hard right"). But even the Green Party is generally to the left of The American Prospect. That crowd is more comfortable with Mother Jones or The Nation or The Progressive or, a bit further to the left, with Z.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Russ, your theory has a little bald spot in it, in that Hart didn't go anywhere.

[cdunlea]

As if arranging government contracts for Halliburton and playing golf with Supreme Court justices after they decide a case in your favor wasn't more egregious...

[Russ D]

As I told my sister months ago, the Democrats will wind up supporting the guy with the poofiest hair. Dukakiks, Clinton, Hart, Kerry... Even Gore had the poofiest hair of the Dem challengers.

Kerry sort of looks like the professor in Re-Animator.

[Kevin B. O'Reilly]

Jesse, if the endorsements don't roll in as predicted, Horner will just say, "Ha! They knew I was onto them so they had to back off the plan." Don't you understand how punditry works yet?

[Vet]

Kerry is a war criminal and has admitted it.

Kerry's full statement went as follows:
"I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground.
"And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty."