Kondracke on whether “political hero” McCain's war stance will “help” his campaign: “Boy, I hope so”

Written by Simon Maloy

Published

On the April 14 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys, co-host and Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke proclaimed that “John McCain was a war hero, and he's my idea of a political hero,” explaining that McCain said in his April 11 speech to the Virginia Military Institute “that he'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war.” Kondracke added: “And he said, 'If you think that the enemy wouldn't kill American kids, you're crazy.' And, you know -- and that is the lesson that Americans ought to take. They are going to come after us wherever we are, and they'll kill our kids as well.” When asked by co-host and Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, “Is this going to help the McCain campaign?” Kondracke responded: “Boy, I hope so.”

As Media Matters for America has noted, according to a March 18 Washington Post article, “U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts” have said that unlike Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda in Iraq “poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland.”

From the April 14 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys:

KONDRACKE: I mean, John McCain was a war hero, and he's my idea of a political hero. I mean, he said in this speech that he'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war. I don't know whether that's going to happen.

And just as another example of political courage, here he is trying to woo conservatives, and he voted against the Bush line on stem cells. That's another example of political courage.

Now he had another item in that speech where he talked about this chilling event where a car gets driven up to a checkpoint in Iraq, and the car was let through because there were two little kids sitting in the backseat. Car drives into a market. The driver gets out, leaves the kids in the backseat, and then blows it up in the middle of the market.

And he said, “If you think that the enemy wouldn't kill American kids, you're crazy.” And, you know -- and that is the lesson that Americans ought to take. They are going to come after us wherever we are, and they'll kill our kids as well.

BARNES: I'll ask you the question: Is this going to help the McCain campaign?

KONDRACKE: Boy, I hope so.

BARNES: That was a -- that was a -- all right. Let me move on.