Kerry Rips Former Pal McCain for Ad Citing Praise from Dems

By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry blasted presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain for using video clips of Democrats’ past praise of McCain in a web-only campaign commercial released Thursday morning.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, called the Arizona senator “unrecognizable” and said he had “changed overnight.”

In painting McCain as a maverick, the ad features a series of Democrats — Kerry, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Sen. Russell Feingold and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. — talking up the Republican nominee as a bipartisan deal-maker and all-around good guy.

Daschle: “He can work with Democrats on key issues.”

Biden: “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain .”

Kerry: “He is a courageous, patriotic American who stands up for what he believes.”

Dean: “Nobody has to guess at what he’s thinking,”

Feingold: “I love John McCain . He’s a great guy.”

Then the ad shows Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama testifying before a Senate committee that the “right approach” to climate change legislation is one that begins with a plan offered by McCain and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman , I-Conn.

It closes with Obama’s primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-N.Y., saying “I know that Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House, and Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002” — a reference to the speech Obama delivered against the Iraq war when he was a state senator in Illinois.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002936148

That was a stupid move by her. I know she has been catching a lot a flak here (sometimes unfairly) but how can anyone defend that stupid quote that "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House, and Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002"?

"Race to the WH" said the same thing tonight. That they knew it would be used against Obama if he were the nom, and they viewed Hillary Clinton as "the gift that keeps on giving." :(

I really wish she hadn't said that.

of Dems' past praise of him. Let's not divide ourselves. That's the road to defeat.

We should slam McCain, not our own. It is McCain who has changed, not our Dems.

while slamming a fellow Democrat in a direct comparison?

It would be one thing if Hillary was just praising McCain like the other Democrats were at different times. But her quote is special since she was making a comparison between Obama and McCain. I'm sorry but that's just stupid. I know she catches a lot of flak here for the wrong reasons but this is hard to defend. This quote is beyond wrong.

There is a huge difference between all the others and HRC - on all the others, you can say as Kerry did "he changed".

“The real question is what happened to the John McCain we used to know and why he changed overnight into a George Bush nominee with a Karl Rove campaign.”

Yeowch! GOOD one!

:kick: