David Wade answers to the charge that Romney is the same as Kerry

[MBS]

3. really good piece

Thanks for finding this.
I love David Wade.
I liked these parts of the oped, too. Really emphasized how well Sen. Kerry did in the primaries, how well he really did in general election, and how close he came to winning. (Well, he probably DID win, but I'll leave that alone for now. .)

That strategy proved successful. Kerry surged to win the Iowa caucuses by 6 points over his closet rival, John Edwards, who was himself surging on the crest of the all-important Des Moines Register endorsement. Moreover, Kerry topped presumptive Iowa frontrunner Vermont Gov. Howard Dean by 20 points and left Iowa with an approval rating of 77 percent among Democratic voters.

And Romney? Despite mounting his second consecutive Iowa campaign, Romney was edged out by a former Pennsylvania senator who’d lost his last statewide campaign by a whopping 19 points. Both Kerry and Romney went on to triumph in neighboring New Hampshire. But Kerry’s Granite State triumph — 12 points ahead of fellow New Englander Dean — continued his momentum for the remaining contests, whereas Romney stumbled into a blowout South Carolina loss that made suspect his ability to coalesce the Republicans.

Kerry went on to amass a won-loss record of 46-4. By July, Kerry-Edwards was besting Bush-Cheney nationally in NBC, CBS, Rasmussen, Zogby and AP polls. Whereas Romney saw failed conservative rivals like Herman Cain and Rick Perry sign on to the campaigns of more conservative candidates, Kerry earned the endorsements of rivals Gephardt, Edwards, Dean, Clark, and Lieberman. . . .

Kerry came within a whisper of the presidency, his goal just out of reach as the final Ohio vote count trickled in. His general election was marked by highs — polls showed him topping a wartime president in three high-stakes debates — and lows — most of all an insufficient response to the infamously deceptive Swift Boat Veterans for Truth television advertising.
All of this gets overlooked because we know too well that history is always written by the winners, and in a campaign’s autopsy the political class is tempted to look back and comb the earth for the earliest seeds of defeat.