DOES ANYONE EDIT TONY BLANKLEY?:

Kerry in crisis (Tony Blankley, 9/03/03, Townhall.com)

I understood Nixon's and Reagan's southern strategies. I even understood Father and Son Bush's South Carolina firewall strategy. But John Kerry's South Carolina strategy is nuts. (And he accuses President Bush of not being a good strategist.) I've been to South Carolina. In fact, I was there just a few weeks ago at a barbecue stand. There was a young man waiting for an order, dressed in full confederate uniform. Inside, they were selling beautiful color T-shirts that portrayed General Robert E. Lee in battle uniform on his fierce white horse leading a magnificent confederate charge against the Yankee intruders.

Down the road a piece from that stand was a restaurant named The Swamp Fox -- which I believe invokes the fond memory of Confederate guerrillas sneaking up on Yankee encampments to deliver justice to the blue bellies from Maine, Michigan and Massachusetts. If ever there was a figure from Massachusetts, it is John F. Kerry. The senator is a man who doesn't look all that comfortable dining at The Four Seasons in Georgetown. The thought of this quintessential moralizing, haughty, Boston Brahman campaigning over drawn pork down at The Swamp Fox could persuade even a cheapskate to pay the price of admission. And what on Earth would he say to the South Carolina voters?

Um, not quite. The Swamp Fox was Francis Marion, a hero of the Revolution. Mel Gibson's fiilm, The Patriot, was based--quite loosely--on his exploits in SC.

Posted by orrinj at September 3, 2003 8:35 AM