"John Kerry, You Asked For This..."

Some of you are probably stunned that I haven’t said anything yet (in this week’s blog) about the Kerry-Swiftboat Veterans for Truth imbroglio. So, to show how much I care even for my enemies, I will indulge you with some outstanding quotes from several pieces on the subject posted today.

Mark Steyn:

[M]ost of these fellows in the anti-Kerry ad — the ones talking about how he can't be trusted, etc — are also Swift boat commanders. If being a Swiftee is the most important thing in American life, why are all these ‘Swift Boat Veterans For Truth’ less entitled to be heard than John Kerry?…

The one thing the Democratic Party owed America this campaign season was a candidate credible on the current war. The Democrats needed their own Tony Blair, a bloke who's a big socialist pantywaist when it comes to health and education and the other nanny-state hooey but believes in robust projection of military force in the national interest. .John Kerry fails that test…

But that's not how the Democratic Party muscle saw John Kerry. Since the notion of a credible war president wasn't important to them, they looked at the war on terror merely as a Bush wedge issue to be neutralized. And they figured their best shot at neutralizing it was Lt. Kerry on a Swift boat. In certain circumstances, it might even have worked. But the Democrats let their contempt for Mr. Bush run away with them…They were having such fun at Mr. Bush's expense and getting so high on those four months from the 1960s that they gave not a thought to the great wasteland of John Kerry's 1970s, '80s and '90s…

The Bush-haters outsmarted themselves: Nobody wants to hear about Vietnam. And Mr. Kerry hasn't anything else to run on.

Vincent Fiore:

I think, though, that I am more offended by the surprised and indignant outrage of the Kerry campaign, and its liberal supporters in the media. So, to those among the Democratic Party as a whole and the media elite who look at political hardball as a one-way street:

Did you really think that Republicans and groups in favor of Bush were going to consistently wilt under your demagogic twaddle and not fire back one day?

Did you really believe that you could continuously produce such raw fiction as Fahrenheit 9/11 and not look in the rearview mirror?

Did you really expect to push countless books written by such accomplished fabricators as Al Franken, Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke and not foresee a response headed your way?

Did you really think that Democratic 527 surrogate groups such as MoveOn.org and America Coming Together (ACT) would always be able to run ads that have about as much truth in them as a state penitentiary, and not expect payback?

Did you really think Bush supporters would just sit back and watch George Soros try to buy the election?

Guess again.

John Kerry, you asked for this.

Robert Novak:

Unfit for Command sends a devastating message, unless effectively refuted…Full release of documents demanded by [Kerry’s] critics could settle this claim quickly if it is unwarranted.” [My emphasis]

And yet Kerry won’t release those documents. Instead, he and his DNC surrogates are trying to intimidate TV outlets in battleground states and ramping up a smear campaign against this other “band of brothers” whose sole distinction is that they don’t support the Navy’s answer to Frank Burns.

Mr. Fiore says it all: “John Kerry, you asked for this.”

And now he’s getting it.