Betsy Is Wrong!

Say it ain't so.:

Judging about how talk radio is buzzing about this remark, the conservatives are going to exploit Kerry's remark for all it's worth. This could become the remark for which the debate is remembered. This might turn out to be a gaffe that will be remembered for years in studying debates and the impact that they have. You know that conservatives think that it's a winner for them by the fact that Brit Hume led off his report with this story and then spent the first segment of the roundtable discussing this.

Unfortunately, only the people who are already going to vote for Bush will recognize the deep character flaw that Kerry revealed by his, Mary-Cheney-is-a-lesbian, remark. This probably won't change any votes away from Kerry. To support Kerry you've already had to swallow:

His lying about his military exploits to gain an early exit from combat

His abandonment of his military obligation halfway through

His slandering his brother Vietnam vets, some of whom were POWs at the time

His possible treason in meeting with North Vietnamese Communists and promoting their interests

His Senatorial career: meetings with Sandinistas, Christmas in Cambodia speech, support for a nuclear freeze, and arms cuts during the Cold War

His dumping his first wife and gaming the Church to have his marriage annulled (making his two daughters illegitimate!)

His numerous lies told during this campaign (e.g. he only has one position on Iraq)

Even the fellow from whom Kerry stole the plans for his cookie store is still going to vote for him:

...in the mind of David Liederman, another cookie entrepreneur. Liederman, the founder of the David’s Cookies chain, claims Kerry ripped off the idea from him. “The bottom line is he just stole it from me,” said Liederman....

Some guy who called me up was John Kerry, in ’79 or ’80,” Liederman recalled. “He said he wanted to come down and talk to me about franchising. He came to the office and said he had an incredible space in Boston, which was Faneuil Hall. He said he needed some plans and some layouts and all sorts of things to get the approval of the landlord.”

“So I gave him the layout, the package, and he went back and I didn’t hear from him for six or seven months.”

Then one day Liederman got a call from someone who said they’d seen one of his stores in Faneuil Hall. Not having a store in Boston, Liederman decided to have a look for himself.

“It was a direct, 100-percent knock off of David’s Cookies,” said Liederman, from the appliances to the shop’s design to the cookies themselves. “If you had walked into a David’s Cookie’s store in Manhattan at the same time he opened ‘John’s Cookies’ in Boston, you couldn’t tell the difference.”

In his 1989 autobiography “Running Through Walls,” where the charge first appeared, Liederman wrote that he challenged Kerry on the origin of his business. “I told him he had stolen my idea, and he replied: ‘You’re absolutely right. I am a politician; I shouldn’t be in the cookie business, so let me sell you my store,’” Liederman wrote.

Liederman never bought the store, he said, because Kerry was operating it in violation of his lease. “He was supposed to be selling jams and jellies, not cookies,” he wrote.....

Still, if he wants it, Kerry hasn’t quite lost Liederman’s vote.

“I’d support anybody that wasn’t Bush,” he said. “If Kerry got the nomination, I’d absolutely support him — although Bush never stole David’s Cookies from me.”

There's something rotten in the state of liberalism. And classless, vicious, personal smears aren't going to change it.