In a post entitled Morning Reads, today the Official Bush-Cheney Campaign blog quoted from an article by police officer Jack Dunphy that originally appeared in the National Review Online. Here are some goodies from the article: Generally speaking, the likelihood that a firefighter will vote for John Kerry is inversely proportional to the number of fires he has actually fought. Witness all those T-shirted "Fire Fighters for Kerry" you saw at the convention. A little soft around the middle some of them were, weren't they? Do you think some of them could haul a hose pack up 50 flights of stairs? I'm not betting on it. I'm guessing the only fires many of them have seen lately were at IAFF barbecues. There is nothing quite like insulting a group of people and then acting baffled that the group supports your opponent. Apparently, Republicans were unhappy to just do this with African-Americans, people from the northeast, the GLBT community, people with advanced degrees, the non-religious and Muslim-Americans, they decided it was time to insult and dismiss firefighters as a group as well.

Fire fighters have been the number one supporters behind John Kerry's campaign from well before Iowa. Without them, Kerry would probably have dropped out on February 3 after Edwards won Iowa and Dean won New Hampshire. Insulting first responders for playing a key role--if not the key role--in electing the next President can only serve to drive them further into the Democratic camp during future elections.