I have long thought of Ted Kennedy as little more than a hack and a blowhard. It would have been hard for anyone to convince me that he could do or say anything that would lower my opinion of him as a politician and as a man. But Friday he referred to President Bush's judicial nominees as "Neanderthals" in remarks to the press. He said that Democrats will continue to resist "any Neanderthal" that President Bush nominates.
This has got to be a new low, even for a man who once went home and went to bed without telling anyone he had just left his girlfriend to drown in his car at the bottom of a lake.
Since he has just described several distinguished and qualified judges as sub-humans, I'm sure he'll be called on the carpet by his upstanding Democratic colleagues who are doubtless appalled at the insulting and inflammatory rhetoric. Zogby Blog has some thoughts on that:
Will the NAACP ask for a reaction? censure? resignation?...My my my.... neanderthals? Such strong rhetoric!
Alabama attorney General Bill Pryor? Is he a neanderthal?
Isn't one of the nominees a black woman (Janice Rogers Brown) Teddy? Is she a neanderthal?
What about former nominee Miguel Estrada? Perhaps he was one too.
I expect a pass on this from the left. If the Senator can kill someone and get a pass, what's a slip of the tongue?
Also from Zogby Blog, a list of on-the-record quotes from prominent Democratic Senators, including the blowhard himself, on the need to grant judicial nominees an up or down confirmation vote in the Senate. "Here's Teddy"....
Edward Kennedy (D-MA) "If our … colleagues don't like them, vote against them. But give them a vote."
(Cong. Rec., 2/3/98, S292)
I'd be surprised if he apologizes. I really think he is without shame.
UPDATE 11/17: A quote on this subject from Taranto's Best of the Web;
"Here we are in the 21st century, and a prominent politician is equating members of racial and ethnic minorities with a primitive subspecies of human being. Democrats were once the party of slavery and Jim Crow, but we'd thought they were beyond that."
UPDATE 11/18: Jay Bryant has a different take on the "Neanderthal" quote.
Posted by dan at November 15, 2003 01:42 AM