A Summary of the Last Eight Days

Courtesy Hugh Hewitt:

In the past eight days, John Kerry has:

• Announced to a national audience that American actions in defense of national security must pass a "global test";
• Announced that he would sell nuclear fuel to Iran;
• Could not answer, and badly filibustered a question on what he would do if Iran continued to push towards nuclear weapons acquisition;
• Denounced as unilateralism the coalition that George Bush put together to overthrow Iraq, and called for unilateral appeasement of North Korea;
• Compared Iraq to Lebanon, but insisted a summit could entice other countries to join the effort in Iraq, even after the French and the Germans announced they would not do so even if Kerry was elected;
• Twice identified the most pressing proliferation problem as the American effort to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons capable of destroying deep bunkers, thus equating the United States with rogue states like North Korea and Iran and proclaiming hostility to modernization of the American arsenal --vintage Kerry defense thinking;
• Announced plan after plan for which no details exist;
• "Absolutely" pledged not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $200,000 annually, a pledge that even his most ardent admirers know is either a bald lie or a repudiation of most of his spending plans (e-mailer LL suggests a new Kerry slogan: "Read my flips: no new taxes!");
• Ignored the creation of 1.9 million jobs over the past 13 months and ignored the economic consequences of the Clinton recession and 9/11 attacks while attacking Bush's tax cuts;
• While calling attention to his Catholic status, defended his vote against banning partial birth abortion, called for taxpayer support for abortion, argued that "parental notification" was connected to dads raping daughters and defended the wholesale harvesting of frozen embryos for research purposes --four positions completely opposite of Catholic Church teaching and far outside the American consensus opinion on abortion;
• Actually said "John Edwards and I are for tort reform," and told the American people that lawsuits against doctors are 1% of the health care problem;
• Defensively denied being "wishy washy," a "flip flopper," and a "liberal," while complaining about being branded such by the president;
• Embraced the Kyoto Treaty and called for its resuscitation with amendments;
• Told America that General Shinseki had been fired by Bush and that the firing had a "chilling" effect on all generals, and one day later said Shinseki had been "retired" --not fired-- and left off the "chilling effect" argument --a record one day flip flop;
• Saw his running mate get woodshedded and his campaign try to reverse that blow by arguing that the Vice President should have remembered meeting Edwards;
• Heard his wife assert that American troops were fighting for oil and many other stunning things;
• Watched as Bush did not make a single memorable error in two debates while effectively underscoring Kerry's "global test" pratfall, focusing on Kerry's did-nothing time-serving two decades in the Senate, wrestle the ISG report to its appropriate place in the discussion of the Iraq War, persuade by repeated argument (which the Vice President also helped along) that coalitions can not be led or maintain by derision or democracies built by indecision;
• Watched as Bush effectively and accurately branded KerryCare as an expanded form of HillaryCare;
• Watched as Bush simply and devastatingly branded Kerry as not credible on taxes, spending and most important of all, defending the United States.
  
  

And to top it all off, this killer line:

If this was a good eight days for Kerry, then November 11, 1864 was a fine day for Atlanta.

The entire Hewitt post can be found here. Excellent.