Yeah, and do you remember what happened to GHW Bush? In politics, it is not what you stand for, but what image the public captures of you that matters. Bush elder, by his stand on taxes, military et al, projected an image of a waffling, out-of-touch president, and suffered the fate. If the Kerry positions are packaged as "tax-and-spend, weak-on-military, Mass liberal", and if that takes hold, he is toast. (And his record has plenty of pegs to hang this image on.)

How come no one has picked up on the meme of the Texas conservative? You know, Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Dick Armey, etc.

Just asking.

Dean,

No dice, old buddy - he ran in 1984 as a candidate committed to ending all the programs he eventually voted against. The article is just spin.

Here is another article about his voting record, and it seems pretty objective to me.

I still say that his voting record is not that good, especially when he voted against the Gulf War in 1991, for the current Iraq war (but against the funding) and he now tries to spin that away.

That's not even the end of it either. He doesn't even show up a lot of the time either. I know this is from the National Review, which has a definite conservative slant, but they cited Congressional Quarterly:

"119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200401220835.asp

That is the most disingenous, dishonest article I've seen on defence spending in years and years.

First of all, there is a subtle implication that since the Republicans are strong on national security, then a decision by a republican president to cut procuement can't be that bad. What the article freaking fails to note is that Kerry didn't vote to limit purchase quanties, he votes against the development of the systems altogether. Moreover, you might want to pay some note to the fact that the Bush/Cheney reductions occurred after 2 kind of important historical events. One being the end of the frigging Cold War, the other being the demonstration during the Gulf War, that procuring more of the existing equipment we had would not provide a large amount of value. I mean exactly how many more fighter planes do you need when the other guys are so terrified, the refuse to fly.

Then, Kaplan goes on to pick Bush's State of the Union Address as some sort of evidence that cutting weapons systems is OK. Take a look at the weapons systems cut - all of them were strategic systems. All of them. Now let's see if anyone remembers the friggin Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty? Anyone, anyone? Yeah, that's right, you may want to cut down the production of new warheads for sub-launched missiles, when you full well know that you're going to be denuclearizing a third of your boomers.

But that s**tblister Kaplan then mooks around and mills about with the notion that Kerry is some sort of big frigging hero because he voted against a motion to scuttle 6 freaking F-18s. Nice. Real nice Fred.

It is my considered opinion that Fred Kaplan knows absolutely jack about defense issues and is a purely political hack.

If you want to go do a bit of reading (and his own avowed policies) take a look at these two images.

I am so damned mad I could spit - Kaplan's screed is spin and nothing but.

If we want to debate his record fine but if he thinks that because of what he did in nam that his voting record is beyond discussion,as he seemed to say, then he has a big problem.

Ara,

How exactly do you figure Cheney as a Texan?

Bravo,

Well, lets cut Dean some slack...he hasn't made the complete journey over to the Dark Side; his spot in the V,RWC is reserved, but he's not quite there, yet.

:o)

"Take a look at the weapons systems cut - all of them were strategic systems."

You mean like the B-1 bomber and the Apache helecopter? Absolutely no better way we could have spent those billions. That Kerry just can't be trusted to defend expensive, wasteful jobs programs for engineers.

Shep, the systems Kaplan refers ot in the 1992 SotU were all strategic systems. The B-1 wasn't refitted for a conventional role (nor was the B-2) until fairly darn late in the game. The Apache was something Kerry wanted to axe (in addition to anything else the military wanted).

BRD, my point is: just because it's strategic doesn't make it a good defense value for the United States. The B-1 and Apache represent $ billions spent with almost zero value as defense appropriations for the American people. Kerry made the right call on those votes and many others that the right will try to use to show him as weak on defense. Trying to get the biggest bang for the buck is his job as US Senator and the exact opposite of what you and others are saying.