Tag: Howard Dean

Dean’s A Scream

The Democrats making Howard Dean their party chair has to look like the gift that keeps on giving for Republicans. Before he finally go the job, many prominent Democrats tried to pretend that Dean would be able to revert to his role as a moderate Governor rather than the flamethrowing candidate. Not likely. Here’s Dean speaking in Kansas about the difference between Republicans and Democrats,

This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.

I’m sure Republicans are hoping they’ll be able to spend the next 4 years telling reporters how shocked they are by Dean’s latest outburst.

Source:

Dean Roars Into Town. The Lawrence Journal-World, February 26, 2005.

Howard Dean Is an Embarassment

Saw New York Governor George Pataki on Fox today. Someone asked him about Howard Dean’s comments to the effect that the Bush administration times the release of information about terrorists threats to disrupt the Kerry campaign. Pataki had the right response saying, “Governor Dean is an embarassment” and moved on. What’s the point of giving more airtime to yet another Dean conspiracy theory?

In a related topic, Henry Hanks points out that some on the Left, such as Al Franken, have attempted to soft pedal and revise Dean’s earlier airing of claims that Bush might have been warned by Saudi Arabia about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time.

Franken said on his radio show (emphasis added),

He said on the Diane Rehm show, “The problem about redacting everything about Saudi Arabia is that it gives, uh, it gives conspiracy theories some credence.” He said, “For example, I saw an interesting theory on the internet that said that oh, uh, you know, that, uh, the Saudis warned Bush about 9/11. Now there’s absolutely no evidence for that,” etc.

But what Dean actually said was,

REHM: Why do you think he’s suppressing that report?

DEAN: I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can’t — think it can’t be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear — the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.

You have to think Karl Rove is still kicking himself that he didn’t find a way to get the Democrats to nominate Dean.

Kicking Dean When He’s Down

Okay, as much as I disliked Howard Dean, I admit I fell for the whole “he’s got a slick organization driven by the Internet” meme which is now exposed as so much nonsense. But the stories coming out after Joe Trippi’s firing suggest the Dean organization wasn’t just overrated but apparently had the institutional intelligence of a tick.

According to the Washington Post and New York Times, Dean is no longer running television ads, largely because it can’t afford to. Dean raised more money than any other Democrat — $41 million — but apparently only has about $4 million left.

But, as Dan Conley notes, something doesn’t add up. Dean apparently spent about $9.2 million on advertising, but where did the other $32 million go? How the hell does Dean raise more than any Democrat in history and end up broke after back-to-back lousy performance in the first two primaries?

It also turns out that the just-fired Joe Trippi didn’t receive a salary but instead drew up to a 15 percent commission on the millions of dollars in TV advertising (that’s right, Trippi profited from Dean’s horrible TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire).

Jesus, if Dean simply wanted his campaign to throw away money for poor results, why didn’t he just hire Halliburton to manage his campaign?

Sources:

Dean’s Money Advantage Dwindles: Candidate Won’t Buy More Feb. 3 Ads. Thomas B. Edsall and Paul Farhi, Washington Post, January 29, 2004.

In Shake-Up, Dean Names Gore Ally to Run Campaign Jodi Wilgoren and Gen Justice, New York Times, January 29, 2004.

Sad day in Burlington. Dan Conley, January 29, 2004.

MoveOn.Org’s Bush=Hitler Ad

There’s been a lot of hype lately about the role of the Internet in this and future elections. MoveOn.Org shows the major downside of the Internet — namely that independent political sites gain audience by being on the extremes which is going to be embarassing to candidates who associate with them.

The Republican National Committee, for example, is smartly doing all it can to make a big deal out of the Bush=Hitler ad that was posted to the MoveOn.Org web site and then later pulled. As far as I can tell, this isn’t a case of just some random idiot posting the ad, but rather an editorial decision by someone with MoveOn.Org to post the ad and then later remove it. This is part of MoveOn.Org’s ad contest which is backed up by serious money (including matching funds from George Soros).

The RNC wants all of Democratic candidates for president to renounce the ad. Certainly some Democratic presidential candidates have been more closely associated with MoveOn.Org than others. For example, Howard Dean’s organization actively campaigned to win MoveOn.Org’s endorsement, and called the publicity stunt an example of the best sort of participatory democracy,

We want to thank everyone who helped make this victory possible. To the volunteers and Dean supporters across the country, thanks for all of your work. To the 139,360 who supported me, thanks for casting the first votes to take our country back. You have demonstrated that you really do have the power.

This primary was participatory democracy at its finest. This week’s vote was not about money-other campaigns devoted far more resources to this primary than ours did-and it was not about special interest groups buying access to government. This primary, the first online primary of the modern age, was about individual Americans influencing the process directly. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans researched this race, voted, and told their friends to vote.

You have to wonder if Dean’s going to appreciate being asked about every inane thing that MoveOn.Org comes up with. But his endorsement of MoveOn.Org makes that all-but-inevitable.

Ultimately, Democrats and their supporters seem to have learned nothing at all from the Republican mistakes of the Clinton years. Republicans then snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by turning legitimate criticism of the Clinton administration into an irrational, all-consuming hatred of the President which made them look like extremists. The best commentary I’ve heard about Dean yet is that he is not a repeat of McGovern, but rather the second coming of Newt Gingrich.

Dean: Unfair and Unbalanced?

Henry Hanks points out that there’s a major problem with Howard Dean’s attempt in last night’s debate to essentially blame Fox News for his speculations about whether or not the president had been tipped off about 9/11 but let it happen anyway,

SPRADLING: Congressman, thank you.

Governor Dean, you had once stated that you thought it was possible that the president of the United States had been forewarned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You later said that you didn’t really know.

A statement like that, don’t you see the possibility of some Democrats being nervous about statements like that leading them to the conclusion that you are not right for being the next commander in chief?

DEAN: Well, in all due respect, I did not exactly state that. I was asked on Fox fair and balanced news that…

(LAUGHTER)

I was asked why I thought the president was withholding information, I think it was, or 9/11 or something like that. And I said, well, the most interesting theory that I heard, which I did not believe, was that the Saudis had tipped him off.

We don’t know why the president is not giving information to the Kean commission. I think that is supposed to be investigated by Congress. I think it’s a serious matter. I agree with Wes Clark, the president is not fighting terrorism. And we need to know what went wrong before 9/11.

I did not believe, and I made it clear on the Fox News show that I didn’t believe that theory, but I had heard that. And there are going to be a lot of crazy theories that come out if the information is not given to the Kean commission as it should be.

The problem here is that Dean is lying both about what he said and where he said it. The comments that started this whole controversy didn’t occur on Fox News but rather during a Dec. 1 appearance on The Diane Rehm Show, which the last time I checked is not part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Here’s the exchange,

Rehm: Why do you think he (Bush) is suppressing that (Sept. 11) report?

Howard Dean:I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far — which is nothing more than a theory, it can’t be proved — is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?

Notice, too, that Dean is also lying about what he said. Dean does not say that he doesn’t believe this theory about Bush having been warned, he simply says that it can’t be proven.

And Dean supporters really think this guy is going to be able to beat Bush?

Source:

Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in Durham, N.H.. Washington Post, December 10, 2003.