Whether you liked the late Sen. Paul Wellstone or not, one quality liberals and conservatives could both admire about him was his honesty. Sen. Wellstone always did what he thought was right and never changed his views even if he thought the majority of Americans didn’t agree with him or if a special interest group told him to change positions. Sen. John Kerry is Sen. Wellstone’s polar opposite.
Sen. Kerry’s voting record in the Senate is the epitome of confusion. Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for President Reagan, describes Kerry as, “Not a man of deep belief but of a certain amount of sentiment and calculation.” Kerry always puts his finger to the wind before he votes, and when he gauges what he thinks most Americans will like, he changes his position faster than you can say flip-flop.
As a giant “thank you” for his flip-flops in the Senate, Kerry was endorsed by numerous Democratic leaders, and now finds himself the Democrats’ nominee for President. Voters who desire to know more about Kerry will end up just as confused as the Massachusetts Senator himself.
If a college student wanted to know more about Kerry before the November election, he or she should check out the various issues that Kerry has flip-flopped on. These include the War in Iraq, eliminating the Marriage Penalty, the First Persian Gulf War, the Patriot Act, the Gay Marriage Amendment, No Child Left Behind, Affirmative Action, ethanol, Cuba Sanctions, NAFTA, the death penalty, double taxation of dividends, small business income tax credits, federal health benefits, welfare reform, medical marijuana, and judicial litmus tests—just to name a few.
The following is an informative presentation of Kerry’s positions on some of major issues and his Senate voting record—unlike what you will hear from the mainstream media or in many of your classes.
Crime and Punishment: Most people know that Kerry was a solider in Vietnam, but few realize that he was a prosecutor before he started his political career. As a prosecutor, he was a long-time opponent of the death penalty under any circumstance. Then, months after 9-11, Kerry revised his position on capital punishment, believing that terrorists should be eligible to receive the death penalty. Although he made an exception for terrorists, Kerry still supports having all murderers, rapists, and child molesters live out the rest of their lives as “guests of the state” in prison.
Education: When George W. Bush was elected President, he proposed an educational program called “No Child Left Behind.” The program is supposed to hold schools and teachers accountable and rewards progress. Congress passed No Child Left Behind with the help of a Massachusetts senator named John Kerry, who proudly voted for it. Kerry now criticizes the program, calling it “a failure” and “an unfunded mandate.” Sen. Kerry claims that the program is a good thing, but is a failure because President Bush would rather give the working class tax relief instead of funding the program. Oddly enough, a few weeks later, Kerry said that the economy was in recession because the President’s spending was, “irresponsible and out of control.”
Kerry’s argument has only one flaw: The facts. According to a Dec. 8, 2003 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “federal spending on education, a top presidential priority, has increased 65 percent under Bush.” (The largest increase in education spending in the Clinton Administration was 19 percent in 2000.) Will Kerry begin his quest to reduce our deficit by doubling or tripling a program that has already been increased by 65 percent? Or, will he cut spending on education back to the level of the Clinton years? We may never know the answers to these questions. What we do know is that Kerry believes that the economy and No Child Left Behind are failures because Bush simultaneously spends too much and too late.
Defense: In the early 1980s Kerry voted for a nuclear freeze with the Soviet Union, which might well have prolonged the Cold War for many years had not President Reagan and the Conservatives in Congress stood up to politicians like Kerry. Since 9-11, Kerry has voted to increase defense spending multiple times.
In 1991, Kerry voted against the Gulf War, saying that “the War should be fought through intelligence and law enforcement.” Then, after the first attack on the World Trade Center, he voted to cut one billion dollars from counter-terrorism activities. Kerry voted to give the President full authority to go to war with Iraq. Then Howard Dean emerged as the anti-war front-runner of the Democratic Party and Kerry’s position changed. Kerry announced in various speeches that the President had tricked everyone who voted for the war, allowing him to boast the same position as Howard Dean.
John Kerry returned to his anti-war activist roots of the 70s, 80s and early 90s when he apparently forgot the letter he sent to former President Clinton, telling him to, “take necessary action to deal with the threat Iraq poses.” After voting for the war in Iraq, Kerry proceeded to vote against $87 billion of funding for the troops in Iraq (although he had previously said on Meet the Press that President Bush sent our troops to Iraq with “inadequate equipment”). Later, he said, “I do not support immediate withdrawal of the troops in Iraq.” In other words, Kerry voted to leave the troops in Iraq—unfunded.
Speaking of supporting our troops, I have a pop quiz: Who said this, concerning U.S. troops in Vietnam? “They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.” That quote comes from a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on April 22, 1971 and belongs to none other than John Forbes Kerry. By the way, Kerry had no proof for any of these charges.
Abortion: In 1972, a bad year for Democrats, Kerry believed that abortion should be left up to the states. Now he believes it is the “law of the land,” and should be enforced. Kerry even repeatedly voted against the Ban of Partial Birth Abortion, a procedure so gruesome that polls show a majority of Americans refuse to believe it exists. Nevertheless, Kerry voted multiple times in the 90s and as recently as last year to keep it legal and available (President Bush signed the Ban into law after two vetoes by President Clinton in the 90s). Kerry was even so bold as to say that, “I am the only presidential candidate who has pledged to appoint only pro-life movement back many decades and could even crush the chance that Roe vs. Wade might someday be overturned. In regards to the protection of innocent lives, Kerry is the model of inconsistency. Through his words and actions, Kerry sends America his message: I am more concerned with pleasing pro-abortion lobby groups than protection innocent babies.
After considering the facts surrounding Sen. Kerry’s record, St. Thomas students must ask themselves this: Is John Kerry the kind of person I want making crucial decisions for me? Is he capable leading with the honesty of the late Sen. Wellstone?
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