During the past ten years, we’ve personally heard Mark Kirk talk about his teaching career several times. Surprise, surprise. The New York Times is reporting that Mark Kirk made some that up. No one is denying he was a teacher, but he “misremembered” some important facts. The non-partisan CapitolFax blog sums it up nicely:
Mark Kirk is an accomplished, decorated Naval veteran who blew that reputation out of the water with unfathomable exaggerations about his military record. He’s an intellectual graduate of the London School of Economics who lied about his experience with liberal nursery school students carrying guns.
These accusations against Mark Kirk are no longer about mere “embellishments” or “exaggerations.” This campaign is now about whether anything he says is true, and why.
The updated portion of the CapFax post contains a good dissection of Kirk’s non-response to these latest revelations.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Kirk’s “deployments” to Afghanistan were two-week training missions connected to his annual reserve duty, not as he implied, going off to war for an extended period of time. The Washington Monthly goes into more detail, and also conveniently lists some of Kirk’s recent “misrememberings”:
Kirk (1) falsely claimed he served “in” Operation Iraqi Freedom; (2) falsely claimed to “command the war room in the Pentagon”; (3) falsely claimed to have won the U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award; (4) falsely claimed to have been shot at by the Iraqi Air Defense network; (5) falsely claimed to be a veteran of Desert Storm; (6) falsely claimed to be the only lawmaker to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom; (7) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kosovo; and (8) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kandahar.
Washington Monthly’s list was apparently compiled before we learned that Mark Kirk not only violated Defense Department policies by campaigning while on active duty, but that he knew he violated policy.
Chicago Tribune
Nitpicker Blog
Recent polling shows that only 10% of Illinois voters think Kirk is telling the truth.
Capitol Fax Blog
This was written after Kirk and Giannoulias won their primaries. It’s still worth reading if you care about the issues:
Huffington Post
At the time, we thought all Alexi had to do was inform voters about where he and Kirk stood on the issues. If this race is about the issues, Alexi wins hands down because Alexi’s positions sync up with the Democratic and independent voters who are a majority in Illinois. That’s why groups that share our values, such as Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthoood, the League of Conservation Voters, and NARAL Pro-Choice America are all with Alexi.
But the issues don’t seem to matter so much. As more voters learn about Kirk’s inability or unwillingness to separate fact from fiction, he’s going to lose votes regardless of the issues. We don’t think anyone who voted for Kirk in the past could have known this about him. Diehard Kirk supporters will shut their eyes and pretend that Kirk is the man they thought he was, but our guess is that many people who might have considered voting for Kirk, including those who previously voted for Kirk, will vote for Alexi.
If you had an issue you really cared about—any issue—who would you rather have advocating for you? Someone like Kirk, whose credibility is shot and who hardly anyone believes—both as a result of his lies and the way he’s mishandled his responses when caught red-handed–or someone like Alexi, who handled himself with class and composure when his family’s bank was scrutinized?
Who do you think is more likely to get things done? Mark Kirk would enter the Senate as the lowest ranking member of the minority party. He antagonized the White House by falsely accusing the Administration of leaking his Defense Department records in an effort to deflect attention from the substance of the accusations (the leaks actually came from within the Kirk campaign).
Chicago Sun-Times
Capitol Fax Blog
Alexi Giannoulias will enter the Senate as part of the Democratic majority and is on good terms with President Obama.
When you then consider that only Alexi’s positions on the issues match ours, Alexi is the clear choice. Alexi for Illinois
