Instapundit notes today that "You won't like Bob Dole when he's angry," and he's definitely not a happy man. Dole appeared on Scarborough Country last night and reminded everyone why the Kerry campaign had to be insane to poke this sleeping giant:

So this time you’ve got a candidate named John Kerry who had a good record in Vietnam, came back from the service, denounced the war, in effect, trashed the Americans who were still fighting there. Went before a Senate committee in April of 1971, threw away his ribbons or his medals or whatever and now is standing before the American people and saying you’ve got to elect me because I’m this Vietnam hero. ...

John Kerry’s a friend of mine. I sent a signal about two or three months ago on television, “John, back off. You know, cool it. Don’t make the Vietnam War the centerpiece of your campaign.” But he’s got a problem, because he spent 20 years in the Senate and doesn’t have much to show for it.

I keep thinking about the Eddie Murphy line from Beverly Hills Cop, when he's been captured at the warehouse by the bad guys. He looks at one of the men he tossed into a buffet table earlier and said, "Are you still pissed at me?" I'd say Bob Dole is still angry about having the Kerry campaign question his combat injuries through their proxy at the Boston Globe, and it looks now like he's around for the rest of the campaign. Unfortunately for Kerry, his "friend" will be saying things like this in interviews:

[DOLE:] But this is after we’d had somebody called Vice President Cheney a coward. They’ve called Bush “a deserter” that he was AWOL, that he’s condoned torture, that he’s condoned poisoning of pregnant women. I mean, all these nasty, nasty, over-the-top attacks. ...

SCARBOROUGH: So you spoke with John Kerry. Did he call you, or did you call him?

DOLE: He called me the next day and said “I’m very disappointed.”

I said, “Well, John, I’m disappointed, too, in all these undeserved attacks on President Bush. If you want to question Dick Cheney’s deferment, that’s fine. If you want to question the National Guard, that’s fine. But John, these other guys, these swift boat veterans are a lot of them that have a different view of what happened than you have, and they have a right to speak. We live in the United States of America. It’s a free country. You may not like what they say, but they have a right to say it.”

SCARBOROUGH: And what did Senator Kerry say to you in response?

DOLE: He said, “I haven’t spent one dime in my campaign on a negative ad.”

Well, he doesn’t have to. He’s got George Soros, who put in $15 million. He’s got Harold Ickes up there cranking out millions of dollars of ads. He’s got his former campaign manager in Boston in another group called Bringing America Together.

By forcing Bob Dole out of retirement, the Democrats have brought back one of the best Republican infighters and a man with sterling national credibility back into the game for a GOP ticket that seemed unwilling to do much in that kind of politics so far this year. In a way, Dole's return has an element of poetic justice to it. Kerry's generation has the reputation for narcissistic self-absorption and has embraced victimhood as its highest value, while Dole's generation garnered the mantle of America's greatest. How interesting that Dole has to come back to the house to tell Kerry to stop whining and behave.

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» MSNBC - Bob Dole on his recent criticism of John Kerry from The Pink Flamingo Bar Grill
It pays not to upset Bob Dole. Instapundit pointed to this terrific intereview on MSNBC where he highlighted his quote about Kerry. As far as I am concerned though Kerry is yesterday's news, the most interesting bit of the interview was this bit on med... [Read More]

Tracked on August 26, 2004 11:05 AM

» Bob Dole Angre from The Key Monk
Dole knows sacrifice very well -- he gave the use of his right arm for his country in World War II. Dole IS a revered and respected former serviceman and he is extremely well-liked. The post-96 election BobDoleWorldTour that Dole did on the various l... [Read More]

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