...."looking silly attacking Dean for addressing the real issues."
Which ones? The ones he invents from whole cloth?
....Dean promised a "new era" -- "not one where we join Republicans and aim simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families." Dean's rhetoric imagines a domestic party enemy that doesn't and didn't exist..... Oddly, what he did do.... is reveal huge gaps in his thinking.... through the use of a straw man.... Saving is so important that he has announced his intention to propose something to encourage saving soon.
There's a catchy promise. It was made months ago -- most prominently by Senator John Edwards -- by Dean's evil opponents. On taxes, Dean has come up with a new way of avoiding the fact that in proposing the repeal of all tax cuts enacted since 2001, he would raise the income taxes of the same working families he allegedly champions.
He calls it the "Bush tax". Dean, however, uses his criticism of the "Bush tax" to hide the fact that its complete repeal would take away its low 10 percent income tax rate as well as its increases in the child tax credit, which would raise ordinary Americans' taxes. What sense does it make to argue that because they didn't get much on '01 and '03 that they should now face higher taxes?....
...."If Dean says everybody who is for a strong security posture, who wants middle-class tax cuts, who wants reform of poor schools … are a poor form of Republicans, that doesn't leave many people to be Democrats," From said.....
....Howard Dean, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, has stated that he is <font size=4>"running as the candidate who is not afraid to tell the truth"<font size=3>.... he irresponsibly suggested President Bush had advance warning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, failed to take responsibility for his remarks when asked about them, and then dissembled about having done so.....
......In his Dec. 1 interview on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show," Dean was asked about allegations that President Bush is suppressing information that he was warned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "The most interesting theory that I have heard so far . . . ," Dean responded, "is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis.".....
....Dean said Thursday, adding that the capture of Saddam Hussein "does not mean that this president—or the Washington Democrats—can declare victory in the war on terror."....
....Mr. Dean has also implied that he opposed giving the president authority to take action in Iraq. Yet on most of those occasions, Mr. Dean has not explained that, at the time, he supported an alternate congressional resolution (Biden-Lugar) that would also have granted the president authority to take unilateral action if he made additional certifications to Congress before doing so.....
....Dean.... told Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, "We need French help in Iraq."....
...."The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy," - Howard Dean, 1998, arguing against exactly the kind of foreign policy he is now advocating.....
....Last week, after Dean denied providing a tax break as governor that benefited Enron Corp. -- which a published report showed he did -- Gephardt said: "Once again, Howard Dean refuses to admit the truth. You can't beat George W. Bush if you can't tell the truth about your own record."....
....Yesterday, he <Gephardt> accused Mr. Dean of issuing "contradictory statements on Iraq over the last year" and using "this issue to constantly attack his Democratic opponents and to seek political advantage." Those contradictions include his assertion last February that "Saddam must disarm," even as he refused to support a credible threat of force that would compel Saddam to do so. More recently Mr. Dean has been insisting that the U.S. can't "afford to fail" in Iraq, yet he opposed President Bush's request for $87 billion to finish the job.....
....Howard Dean came under criticism from an Iowa newspaper last weekend for an answer to a questionnaire in which he implied that his brother was serving in the military when he disappeared in Laos 29 years ago. His brother had been traveling in Southeast Asia as a tourist....
...."The capture of Saddam has not made America safer."....
....In January, Dean told an abortion rights audience about a young patient he believed had been impregnated by her father. He was explaining why he opposes parental notification requirements for girls and young women seeking an abortion. But Dean later told Jake Tapper of Salon.com that he learned several years ago that "her father was not the father of her child; it was more complicated than that."....
....Dean has distorted portions of his record as governor, when he was generally considered a centrist. He has repeatedly denied siding with Republicans such as then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1995 in calling for slowing Medicare's annual growth from 10 percent to 7 percent, even though he told a Vermont newspaper he "fully subscribed" to the idea.....
....Vermont Abenaki Indian leaders said they were outraged last month to see Dean onstage at a Native American conference in Albuquerque. For more than a decade, they said, his administration vigorously opposed their quest for state and federal recognition, contending the Indians might make land claims and bring casinos to Vermont. Dean drew raucous applause from his New Mexico audience when he endorsed the benefits of tribal gambling establishments. "Needless to say, to hear him say onstage in Albuquerque that he was in favor of gaming for federally recognized tribes came as a big shock to a lot of people in Vermont,".....
....Dean fielded a question about what kind of qualities he was looking for in a running mate.... Dean pledged, "I'm going to pick somebody with defense and foreign policy experience. ... The fact is, it's a resumé problem."....
....Even as he called on rivals to mute their criticism, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean took a swipe Monday at some moderate Democratic Party leaders, calling them the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party."....
Presidential Campaign Was Cited During Talks to Seal Dean's Papers as Governor
....Howard Dean was asked why he had decided to keep nearly half of his records as governor of Vermont under seal until 2013. "Well, there are future political considerations," Dr. Dean told statehouse reporters. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."....
....An examination of the correspondence between Mr. Rocchio and Mr. Sanford shows that future political considerations were indeed a part of the discussion.
In an Aug. 21, 2002, memorandum to Mr. Rocchio, Mr. Sanford said he was asked to "further develop the idea" that the term for the sealed documents might be automatically extended if Dr. Dean were a presidential candidate when it expired.
"The Willie Horton example was raised," Mr. Sanford wrote, referring to television ads about the pardon of a convicted felon that Republicans used against former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in 1988 when he was the Democratic presidential nominee.
Mr. Sanford, however, raised a caution. "Setting new barriers to access in an attempt to anticipate attacks would be, at best, unfortunate," he wrote. "Ironically, such barriers would probably become an issue, detracting from the governor's proud record of achievement."....
....He acknowledged there were also political considerations. "People who are in competition with him right now will look for ways to distort him based on his record," Mr. Rocchio said. "That is an extra argument."....
....When he left office, Dean explained his reasons for sealing the documents in an interview on Vermont Public Radio. "Well, there are future political considerations," Dean said. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor.".... Senator Joseph I. Lieberman <said>, "We Democrats are better than that." Ed Gillespie <said>, Dean's statements about his records "were completely at odds with all the facts."....
....Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean (search) says it's premature to recommend what penalty Usama bin Laden (search) should face before he's been legally determined to be guilty of the Sept. 11 terror attacks..... |
