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Friday, October 8, 2004

Strange Folks

It should give John Kerry supporters, as well as the rest of us, some measure of pause to consider that a large segment of Kerry's supporters are voting for him because either they believe he's lying or they hope that he is. Something like 30% of the Democrat party is fervently anti-war. This is the overriding issue for them and they want us to get out of Iraq now. Even so, Kerry has vowed to stay and win it. Yet this 30% is solidly in his camp. There can be only one reason for this discrepancy and that is that they don't believe the Senator really means what he says.

After all, everything he's ever done in his public life suggests that he doesn't mean it. He first broke upon the national stage by insisting that the United States summarily withdraw from Vietnam because it was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time and there were no national interests at stake. Since then he has consistently sought to thwart efforts to use military force abroad. To think that he would now be genuinely transformed into an advocate for "staying the course" in a war he believes is misbegotten and pointless is to think that he has somehow undergone an ideological transformation that would be nothing short of miraculous.

Moreover, there is another sizable chunk of Democratic voters who are viscerally opposed to an unfettered right to bear arms. It is perhaps one of the top three issues for them in determining their vote. Kerry flaunts his support of such a right and yet the anti-gun folks are out campaigning for him. Why? Is it because they don't think he's telling the truth about his love for the 2nd ammendment?

It is certainly one of the oddities of this election season that the Democrats have mustered such an animosity toward President Bush because, as they claim to see it, he lied to the American people, while, at the same time, a large number of them are going to vote for Senator Kerry precisely because they believe, or are hoping, that he really is lying to the American people.

Strange folks, these liberals.