Kerry vs. TraitorCo!

Kerry campaign press release, 3 February 2004:

George Bush continues to fight for incentives to encourage Benedict Arnold companies to ship jobs overseas at the same time he cuts job training for our workers and cuts help for small businesses that create jobs here at home.

(Note that the link to the original source, a press release on John Kerry's own campaign website, has long since vanished.)

John Kerry, February 2004:

We will repeal the tax loopholes and benefits that reward Benedict Arnold CEOs and companies for shipping American jobs overseas. Instead we will provide new incentives for good companies that create and keep good jobs here in America.

Wall Street Journal interview, May 2004:

But the Benedict Arnold line applied, you know, I called a couple of times to overzealous speechwriters and said "look that's not what I'm saying."

Benedict Arnold does not refer to somebody who in the normal course of business is going to go overseas and take jobs overseas. That happens. I support that. I understand that. I was referring to the people who take advantage of non-economic transactions purely for tax purposes -- sham transactions -- and give up American citizenship. That's a Benedict Arnold. You give up your American citizenship but you want to continue to do business and deduct and do everything else. That's what I'm referring to. [...]

Washington Post, 5 August 2004:

But Kerry campaign officials said Kerry's use of the "Benedict Arnold" designation had to do only with firms that incorporated overseas to avoid U.S. tax liabilities, not firms that have engaged in "outsourcing."

Mickey Kaus, 9 August 2004:

Discriminations catches the Kerry campaign erasing from its Web site the primary-campaign denunciations of "Benedict Arnold CEOs" that don't fit Kerry's new, narrower, business-friendly definition of "Benedict Arnold."

The Boston Globe, 19 June 2003:

Documents obtained by the Globe detail John Kerry's 1983 investment of between $25,000 and $30,000 in offshore companies registered in the Cayman Islands. The document below, signed by Kerry, shows his pledge to purchase 2,470 shares of Peabody Commodities Trading Corp. through Sytel Traders, registered in the Caymans.