The Best Swiftboating Since Kerry

by: JRB

Sat Sep 30, 2006 at 11:01:29 AM EDT

( - promoted by jmelli)

I was a Clark supporter in 2004, and one of the reasons I most admired him was his sense of commitment and duty to our country. He was a champion athlete, first in his class at West Point, a Rhodes Scholar, and a war hero -- he could have retired and had any high-paying, cushy job he wanted. Yet he chose to spend more than three decades of his life in the humble service of our country, even training himself to walk without a limp to continue to serve.

That's the kind of leader I want in Washington D.C.

It's the same reason I'm supporting Bob Menendez. He came from a working class background in Union City and went on to college and law school. Because he's smart, industrious, and a hard worker, he could have gone into another, more lucrative field. But instead, he has devoted his entire life to public service. In my opinion, this is his greatest asset.

Which is why New Jersey and Beltway Republicans are taking Menendez's background, twisting it, and wielding it against him. What's even more disappointing is how many Democrats, locally and nationally, are accepting it rather than fighting back.

JRB :: The Best Swiftboating Since Kerry

According to Kean Jr and his whisper campaign, everything Menendez has ever done in the people's office has been in Menendez's personal self-interest. To compound this fairytale, they're slinging the mud as fast as they can produce it.

It's already been shown that the Kean Jr crowd are liars. We know it, they know it, and others know it. Kean Jr won't rescind his lies because that's not a part of the plan -- they can't allow a single headline to contradict the storyline they've been pushing for months.

In the aforelinked post, Xpatriated Texan summed,

This is the point of all of this - sometimes a Swift Boat is built by willing engineers and sometimes it's built by planting the seed of a lie in the ear of someone who is all too willing to believe it, despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

They've put so many Swiftboats in the water, it's hard for even the most steadfast supporters to tell what is and isn't the truth anymore. We are not at all willing to believe it, but at a certain point, we become overwhelmed and accept it.

Frankly, I'm tired of letting the Kean Jr crowd demoralize me. Besides his mudslinging, I'm insulted by his attack on our state and how he talks about certain parts of New Jersey like it is home to the biggest slime in the country. Like many others, generations of my family achieved the American Dream in Hudson County. The tone of Kean's voice when he says 'Hudson County' -- like it's some sort of disease -- is as if he's saying, 'No honest person devotes his life to serving Hudson County.'

Imagine this: Wes Clark runs for office, and Republicans launch a wave of attacks on every aspect of his lifetime of service in the military.

Immediately: 'It's a Swiftboating.'

Now, replace Clark with Menendez and military with Hudson County.

Personally, I didn't see it, but fortunately, it's not too late.