FLASHBACK

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card yesterday called on his home state's senator to apologize to President Bush, calling it "beneath" John F. Kerry to use an expletive to blast Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

The Holbrook native, who serves as Bush's top deputy, said Kerry shouldn't have used the phrase "f--- it up" to assail Bush.

"I've known John Kerry for a long time and I'm very disappointed that he would use that kind of language," Card said on CNN's Late Edition.

"That's beneath John Kerry.... I'm hoping that he's apologizing, at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know," Card said.

The comments were the first White House rebuke of a Democrat in the presidential primary campaign.

Local and national Republicans joined the fray, saying Kerry's comments seemed to be prompted by his steady drop in primary polls.

"A drop in the polls seems to correspond with a drop in word choice for Sen. Kerry," RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Taylor said. "It's not the type of language you would expect to hear from a leader."

"John Kerry's pathetic campaign has sunk to a new low," added Massachusetts Republican Party Executive Director Dominick Ianno. "It's to the point where he just keeps embarrassing himself." ...

--Boston Herald, 12/8/03 (via Free Republic)

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By the way, I noticed this in the CNN story about Cheney's outburst, which took place as an official photo of the Senate was being taken:

Using profanity on the Senate floor while the Senate is session is against the rules. But the Senate was technically not in session at the time and the normal rules did not apply, a Senate official said.

Recently the White House had lawyers looking for ways around the torture laws. Do you think the White House would waste taxpayer money by having some of the same lawyers look into whether Cheney could do this without technically violating the rules of the Senate (of which he is, constitutionally, the president)?