Covered in Glory
Below is what Hugh Hewitt had to say in response to Kerry's nuclear-freeze talk from last night (no specific hyperlink available):

KERRY: "Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense.

You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.

Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation."

Hewitt says:

This [...] may be the most astonishing part of Kerry's presentation last night, an authentic moment for the nuclear-freeze favoring, weapons-system hating Senator with 20 years of anti-military votes in the Congress. Kerry's voice actually rose with outrage when he said "[t]he United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons." "It doesn't make sense," he exclaimed.

How I wish Jim Lehrer had asked him why not. Then the authentic Kerry would have responded on the dangers of American power and American unilateralism. Notice Kerry's dismissiveness of the prospect of even using nuclear bunker busters. Does he prefer that a president of the future not have that option when confronted with a rogue nation threatening us or an ally but whose command and control facilities are buried deep in mountains or below a mile of concrete? Kerry states simply that seriousness about containing nuclear prolfieration begins with "shutting down" American weapons development. This is profoundly at odds with mainstream American defense thinking. It is a radical position, and Kerry is a radical candidate. Kerry expresses amazement that anyone can believe that America can say nukes for us but not for others, but America has been saying that since the dawn of the nuclear era, and must continue to say so. Follow Kerry's logic, and it is the iron logic of unilateral disarmament.

Who is Kerry trying to appeal to with this? The hard, anti-nuke Left? He's fluent in their tongue ---as I am not--- but is it still enough these days to simply mouth one's opposition to new nuclear weapons development here at home? Is that even a thing anymore? I thought that band broke up years ago.

Or maybe Kerry's not as attuned to that segment as he thinks. If you were a nuclear-freeze or plain old anti-nuclear activist 20 years ago, then you are probably just a garden variety anti-Iraq War critic today. Does Kerry suppose that it's enough to emphatically oppose bunker-buster nukes so that the old activists will not notice that he's still committed to winning the war in Iraq?

Oh, who cares? He looks so Presidential!