Dragging Mary Cheney into Presidential Politics

It seems reasonable to conclude that the Kerry-Edwards campaign made a calculating decision to discuss the homosexuality of Mary Cheney, one of the Vice President Dick Cheney's daughters, on national television. John Edwards brought the issue up for no good reason during his debate with Dick Cheney, so we know that John Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney was not an accident. Further, when the campaign chairwoman of the Kerry-Edwards campaign was asked about the appropriateness of John Kerry's statements, Mary Beth Cahill responded that it was "fair game." It appears that John Edwards also used the "fair game" term on the campaign trail a day or two after the debate.

It seems to me that such sleazy behavior on the part of John Kerry and John Edwards will hurt their campaign, not help it. If so, why did they employ this bizarre tactic? I can only think of two reasons. (1) They believed that informing socially conservative viewers about Mary Cheney's sexuality would reduce voter turnout among Republican voting groups such as evangelical Protestants and traditional Catholics. (2) They believed that they could persuade voters that Bush and Cheney must be really mean people to deny gay marriage given that a member of the Cheney family is a homosexual.

There is one thing that we do know about this incident. It was "dirty pool" as Fox News analyst Morton Kondracke said immediately after Wednesday night's debate. And it seems that a recent poll shows that two-thirds of voters believe John Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney was inappropriate. We know that John Kerry's personality rubs many voters, even those who agree with his political views, the wrong way. Could the Mary Cheney incident confirm what many voters already suspected, that John Kerry is totally self-serving and willing to exploit anyone, even his rich wife with whom he "married up", for personal gain?

Here's a column by Bill Kristol and another by William F. Buckley Jr. on this same topic.

UPDATE: Here's a post by Tom the Redhunter on this topic on his personal blog site.