Mark Kennedy, your man in Iraq until "the terrorists can't win"

While the media churns itself into butter covering John Kerry's botched joke, a guy who is actually on the ballot statewide in Minnesota said yesterday that American troops should come home from Iraq only "after the terrorists can't win." Maybe the pundits and talking heads could break away from harpooning Kerry long enough to ask U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kennedy exactly what parameters and conditions are required to satisfy his "terrorists can't win" scenario. Seeing as how it is the U.S. Senate and Iraq is regarded as the number one issue in this campaign, it might be, you know, more relevant to Minnesotans than what non-candidate John Kerry said, and subsequently apologized for, out in California.

Lord knows Amy Klobuchar won't press Kennedy hard on what sounded like a decades-long commitment to keeping our sons and daughters on the front lines in Iraq. Kennedy's opponent is so afraid of losing her double-digit lead that she's content to let all sorts of outrageous things slide by, lest anyone think she's a dangerous liberal or something. It has fallen to Independent Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald to speak plainly and forcefully to the issues.

It's one thing for the press to make mountains out of molehills with Kerry's remarks. But letting an actual candidate make such an open-ended commitment to such a disastrous and wildly unpopular war without any follow-up is worse.