Stop bringing it on!!!

John Kerry has repeatedly invited Bush to "Bring it on!" ... especially with regards to examining Kerry's Vietnam record. The problem with issuing such a challenge (apart from the fact that it's a transparent example of Kerry trying to ride on the coattails of the only Democrat administration in living memory that has been even remotely likeable ... Jeb Bartlet's) is, however, that whereas it might play well with a friendly audience at home, there's always the danger that your opponent will, well, bring it on.

And Kerry's opponents did. The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth (not to mention others) have been bringing it on for months now, and they aren't going to stop until they hear Johnny's concession speech. And maybe not even then.

And so Kerry did what he does best: flip flopped. His new position became: "How dare they bring it on! Who do they think they are?!"

For months the only 527's that showed up on radar were pro-Kerry groups, burning through millions of dollars as fast as George Soros could shovel it to them (and that's pretty fast). During that time there's nary a word from Kerry (or Bush) to protest such ads. Then the Swift Vets show up with a few thousand dollars of ads and Kerry takes about 38 seconds to get on the air huffing and puffing and demanding that Bush knock it off with the 527 ads.

Well, Bush was happy to call for an end to 527 ads. Except that it turned out that Kerry didn't mean all 527 ads ... just the anti-Kerry ones (Message: pro-Kerry 527 ads - good; pro-Bush 527 ads - evil, probably Hitleresque). We know the courts tend to be activist, but unless Kerry could get his case before this one, there's no way they're going to find that pro-Kerry 527's are acceptable but pro-Bush ones aren't, even if they task the Hubble to search the penumbra of the third amendment.

So Kerry and all his 527's kept running their anti-Bush ads. But the Swifties kept running their ads, too. And then Kerry noticed a distressing phenomenon: his ads were all getting ignored, but the Swift Vet ads were sucking all the oxygen out of the Kerry bubble. A sane person examining this curiosity might further wonder why it is that the Swifties (budget next to nothing) had such an effect when the Lefties (budget $100 million) accomplished nothing. (Does anyone even remember one of the pro-Kerry ads?) The only reasonable conclusion is that the Swift Vet ads rang true with voters whereas the Lefty ads rang true with Ted Kennedy and Barbara Streisand.

And so, having been beaten at his own game, Kerry once again hauls himself onto TV and arrogantly demands that all these ads just stop! Will somebody please just make them go away!

All this has got to make one wonder. If Kerry talks tough ("Bring it on!") to Bush but then caves the moment he gets a little bit of heat, is he really the fellow we want to trust to stand up to terrorists? If he collapses when met with verbal opposition, how crazy do you have to be to think he'll have a will of steel when faced with the psychopathic, murderous, no-holds-barred death-cult of radical Islam?

Who knows? Maybe Kerry isn't flip flopping on this. Maybe it just depends what the definition of "bring it on" is.