When did Edwards suddenly gain "experience"

[Gaard]

Originally posted by: conjur
LMAO!!

Liberal media sites?

Again, we see a Bush-fan using the term liberal improperly. It is meant as a derogatory term meaning socialist or leftist.

Of course news will generally be liberal (meaning, Libertarian.)

It's all about freedom.


Now, trying to compare the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Medved, Prager, Ingraham, etc. to something like CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. is so utterly ridiculous that I cannot believe you even considered typing that.

Would this be a good time to link to the thread where Rip called Fox News centrist?

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
What about their glaring differences on trade?

Is that intra-party competition too?

Yeah, heaven forbid the two candidates on a ticket wouldn't be in lockstep on every issue! :roll:

Remember GHWB's attack on Reagan and his "voodoo economics"? Now you Republican types look back on the Reagan administration as the zenith of Western civilization . . .

In all seriousness, don't you have anything better to do than dig up every piece of evidence on Kerry and Edwards that could be construed as negative (or, in the context of your asbestos/tort reform threads, just fabricate it), then post it? This is just sad.

 

[AcidicFury]

Edwards has a big smile. He must be evil...

 

[Red Dawn]

Experiance is over rated. Look at Cheney and how much of a destructive bastard he has been!

Of course to wild eyed Funda Mental Cases like Ripsnortin the only thing that matters is if his myopic religious views are thrust down own the throats of those who are more enlightened to be fooled by that nonsense, even of it means supporting the devil himself (otherwise known as DICK Cheney and his hand puppet the Dub!)

 

[Riprorin]

But we digress. The question was: Who is this POOR John, and why is his running mate so skeptical about his ability to lead?

If you want the long answer, link to the Internet's most comprehensive resource on Kerry and Edwards: http://Kerry-04.com/ or http://Kerry-Edwards04.info/ (That's right, seasoned readers of this column know that The Patriot tagged the Kerry-Edwards ticket long ago. Indeed, as noted in The Washington Post this week, we purchased the aforementioned domains in order to develop a strong web presence -- a presence dedicated to telling folks the truth about John Kerry.)

As for the short answer, Edwards' only presidential resume builder is that he's a first-term senator. Having spent much of his professional life making money on human misery, POOR John has held no other elected office, and his Senate campaign was funded mostly by fellow trial lawyers. (And, boy, did they ever get their money's worth! Edwards has devoted most of his short tenure in the Senate to blocking any measures aimed at tort reform.) Perhaps most telling about his effectiveness as a legislator is this little statistic: Of the 74 bills he sponsored, not a single one has emerged from committee for a floor vote. The same is true for most of his amendments and resolutions.)

Kerry's aforementioned reservations about Edwards notwithstanding, he changed his tune this past Tuesday morning when announcing his pick. Kerry, who can flip-flop faster than a professional pancake maker, chortled, "I want you to know we think this is a dream ticket. We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America. And we've got better hair." We'll certainly cede him that. Kerry, ever a man of the people, spends some $150 for a hair cut at DC's hoity-toity Cristophe Salon. As for John Edwards, well, he actually looks like a Breck Girl.

Yet despite their glorious coiffures, Kerry can't be giddy about Edwards' anti-growth (read: anti-jobs) voting record, or his anti-military voting record, or his anti-family voting record, or his anti-tax-cut voting record. In these respects, Edwards does anything but "balance" the Kerry ticket. To the contrary, his populist rural Southern gentlemanly façade simply doesn't square with his hard-Left Senate voting record. In fact, the non-partisan National Journal, which has been rating voting records for a long time, puts Edwards a close fourth behind Kerry, who is rated the most Left-voting member of the Senate. Without question, then, this is the most liberal major-party ticket in American history -- a ticket that outflanks even Mondale-Ferraro.

So what can Edwards realistically deliver to the Kerry ticket? Did we mention he grew up POOR?

Link

 

[conjur]

Now you're relying upon op/ed pieces?


<sigh>


And, it's from quite the biased site, too:

http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/JonathanGarthwaite.cfm

Townhall.com, the premier conservative portal for news, coalitions, commentary, and discussion of public policy and politics

Ok, if you want to post links from truly biased sites, guess that opens the floodgates for me to post articles from sites that are truly biased to the left.


Scraping the Barrel
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/07/07_808.html

Say this for the Bush campaign ? its attack dogs did their homework. They just didn?t do it terribly well.

In anticipation of John Kerry?s big announcement Tuesday, the GOP purchased the web address www.kerrypicksedwards.com (plus similar ones for Gephardt and Vilsack) and was ready to launch its opposition research as soon as Kerry made the pick official. The result is a nearly 30-page document called "Who is John Edwards?" (Answer: "a disingenuous, unaccomplished liberal and friend to personal injury trial lawyers.") The Republicans proceed to attack the North Carolina senator on everything from his having served just one term in office to his inability to name the type of truck he has.

Besides pointing out obvious disagreements over policy, the "research" includes a scattershot list of unrelated and often bizarre criticisms, many taking small portions of news reports grossly out of context. Take this example, designed to paint Edwards as a dabbling latecomer to politics:

"Neither was [Edwards] active in politics for the first 44 years of his life, except for the occasional donation to a Democratic candidate. He never ran for office or worked on a campaign. Indeed, before he burst onto the political scene in 1998, he did not even vote in several local elections, because, he says, he was too busy with his legal work."

But the January New York Times piece where that quote appears goes on to explain how "that all changed" with the 1996 death of Edwards? 16-year-old son Wade:

"Mr. Edwards emerged from seclusion to throw himself into politics and public life with a vengeance. Although he had toyed with running for office since the early 1990s, several family friends said, Wade's death pushed him into the public fray. He tried only two more cases."

The Republicans use a similar approach to Edwards? voting record, pointing to a 1998 Charlotte Observer article (story not online) that found:

"[Edwards] failed to vote in half the elections he could have over the past seven years. One of seven Democrats in the May 5 primary, Edwards voted in nine of 18 elections since 1991, according to Wake County voting records."

The very next sentence explains these were mostly local elections, and quotes Edwards acknowledging that he usually voted in "major and primary" elections. But considering Dick Cheney?s well publicized track record of skipping elections - including the 2000 primary - this might not be a wise route for the Bush campaign to go down.

So too with the GOP charge that "Edwards? presidential campaign has received $2,500 from oil and gas company employees." Not only is $2,500 a drop in the proverbial bucket when it comes to campaign finance, but do Bush and Cheney of all people want to get into contributions from oil companies?

One of the strangest bits of research is a quote from Bill Clinton (whose judgment the GOP seemingly now endorses) about Edwards? campaign:

"As Clinton said, according to a transcript on the Atlantic Web site, ?I told him: John, you?re great on TV. You make a great talk. You can talk an owl out of a tree. But my opinion is, presidential elections are won by the strength of the candidate, and having a network of support, and then by the mega message, having the big message.? In other words, Edwards looked and sounded good -- but there wasn?t much substance behind his words and image."

Of course, the site leaves out the fact that the article was from March 2003. So Clinton was speaking about Edwards in the embryonic stage of the campaign - before Al Gore decided whether to run, before Howard Dean was a household name and well before Edwards began using the "two Americas" stump speech that provided a textbook case of "mega message."

But the most bizarre section of opposition research is that entitled "Edwards is Phony and Disingenuous," which uses a random assortment of innocuous facts to imply Edwards is somehow less than authentically Southern:

"Beverly Hills, 90210, Was The Ninth Ranked Zip Code Contributor To Edwards? Presidential Campaign, Totaling Over $68,000 In Contributions."

"Dennis Hopper Hosted A Fundraiser For Edwards"

"Edwards Hasn?t Hunted Or Fished ?In Years.?"

"Edwards Doesn?t Follow Weekly NASCAR Races, Adds He ?Doesn?t Follow Anything Except Politicking.?"

Considering the GOP had ample time to look into Edwards? past and compile a range of frivolous criticism, his selection probably bodes well for the Kerry camp. If this is the best Republicans can come up with, Edwards is already proving a formidable opponent.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0427/mondo5.php

The choice of John Edwards sends three big signals to the political community; With Edwards, Kerry will attack Bush across the South, which means Florida will definitely be in play during the campaign. During his presidential campaign, Edwards made a major point of challenging Bush's grip on the South.

Second it signals that the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, Edwards's home base, will once again carry big clout in Democratic party politics. Anybody who thought Kerry's support for Edwards spelled a tilt to the liberal wing of the party, can pretty much forget it.