(In line with Mark Lause's delicious Monty Python post, this was something that just showed up on Leo Casey's mailing list that is made up exclusively of trade union functionaries, social democratic hacks and other diehard reformists. The author is a New Politics editor who must have found the pro-Kerry sentiment there even too much for him to bear, by the appearance of the rather well-aimed satire.)
HEADLINE: Kerry's New Stances No Shock to Fervent Supporters
By Michael Hirsch,
Special to Democratic Left
(Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 15, 2004) Seeking to winnow away more of the Bush electoral base, Democratic presidential contender John Kerry told reporters lobbing staccato questions to the candidate at the Ohio State Fair's pig-judging contest that he would have been the sole holdout were he a Supreme Court justice during the Roe v. Wade deliberations.
"I never did like that decision," said Kerry.
While the demurrer was met with shock by erstwhile feminist supporters of the Kerry effort, raised angry retorts from the Democratic Socialists of America and caused Leo Casey to be sedated, it was judged a shrewed political move by other critics of the Bush administration.
"When will the left learn that the circular firing squad does not work? said Andrew English, a Minneapolis flaneur and 1930s French postcard collector. Reached at a St. Paul day spa cum tanning salon, the voluble political observer insisted how "The job right now is to re-defeat Bush. That means Kerry and us are on the same side for now, and we need to help Kerry and not pull him down. There will be time to blast Kerry later."
English did not specify how much later.
"Anyway, 'anti-choice,' as the Soviets said about 'fascism,' is just a matter of taste."
At presstime, rumors were emerging from the Kerry camp that the candidate was having a serious "re-think" of other long held views. Among these are Kerry's newfound belief that he would have nuked Moscow during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had he been president and refused to comply with federal school desegregation orders were he the 1960s governor of Arkansas. Sources also say the former Vietnam hero now would even favor signing a separate peace treaty with the Third Reich and corralling in Sam Adams from dumping tea into Boston Harbor, ostensibly in violation of environmental standards.
But these were brushed aside by English.
"Until I hear the man say it, it's idle to speculate" said English, who offered that he always considered Churchill "a bit of a loony and a hard on" when it came to opening a second fighting front in Europe. English also said that as a Midwesterner he doesn't drink Sam Adams.
But won't Kerry's new stances scare away core Democratic voters? English was nonplussed. "Let 'em leave, the hoary sectarians. It takes a cast-iron stomach and a rubber spine to stand with Kerry. Besides, four more years of Bush is unthinkable.""
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