Losing it

Here’s the latest from Reuters:

At a morning stop in Illinois, Kerry criticized Bush's economic record and renewed his promise to repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and boost tax relief for the middle class. He told a worker in Chicago, in an exchange picked up by television microphones, that his Republican critics "are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen."

That “exchange picked up by microphones” is priceless – it implies that the statement was not meant to be heard by the press and/or it was much more vitriolic in tone than the text suggests.

John Kerry has been described as notoriously thin-skinned to criticism. Now that he’s the front-runner, he’s getting it with both barrels. Normally, as John Ellis noted, he deploys the “Vietnam Heat Shield.” Mark Alexander in Town Hall also picked up on this defense technique:

More recently, we note the senator's whiny, thin-skinned response to questions raised over his defense voting record by Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss -- questions utterly appropriate to anyone aspiring to be commander-in-chief: "[The President has] decided once again to take the low road of American politics. ... Saxby Chambliss, on the part of the president and his henchmen, decided today to question my commitment to the defense of our nation...." And again, when responding to similar queries: "I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did." Wait a minute -- you mean John Kerry actually served in Vietnam? Who knew?

At some point his handlers must have pulled Kerry aside and said: “You’ve been playing that one note too many times” and he stopped. (Anybody else notice he’s been relatively quiet on Vietnam lately?) But like somebody trying to hold back a sneeze, he explodes in unexpected ways when he can’t use his favorite retort. So while under normal circumstances, Kerry might say: “How dare they impugn my honor, those who have never served in Vietnam” he blurts out impetuous thoughts about “blowing Osama’s brains out” or a “crooked” White House.

Poor John….let it out, man, let it all out.