Some background: the vice president booked a speaking engagement at the same college where Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, ostensibly to make what his campaign staff called “a major foreign policy statement.” Turns out to have been a stump speech, attacking the Democrats’ presumptive nominee such that the president of the college, a retired brigadier general and decorated veteran of Korea and Vietnam, felt compelled to apologize to the faculty and students for the speech’s content.
TheState.com: Your guide to news, sports, jobs, homes, cars:
[Westminster College President Fletcher] Lamkin said he was not expecting a speech minus any mention of presidential politics during an election year, but that the second half “was all about politics and a political stump speech and in that respect it was disappointing.”
In the e-mail, Lamkin said that “in the interest of balance and fairness and integrity, we will strongly encourage Senator Kerry to take advantage of this venue to make his views known as well.”
Kerry spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign had received Lamkin’s e-mail and would consider a visit to Westminster, which is located in the center of a presidential battleground state.
So instead of cloaking themselves in Churchill’s statesmanlike mantle, they open themselves for a widely-publicized rebuttal in a key state. If stupidity was painful, these clowns would be incapacitated.