Oliphant: "Past haunts Dean on Medicare issue"

[ModerateMiddle]

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/dean/articles/2003/09/30/past_haunts_dean_on_medicare_issue/

snip

Ever since Gephardt -- followed by John Kerry -- raised the Medicare issue nearly a month ago, Dean has expressed wounded horror at the guilt by association, deplored the tactics of "Washington politicians," and declared Gephardt's criticisms "flat-out false."

Actually, they are flat-out true. That becomes even more troublesome now that Dean has come up with still another explanation for his Medicare behavior -- Bill Clinton himself. Dean's inaccuracy here is also instructive.

more at link

[revcarol]

1. Oliphant is right on the money here...

but how many Deaniacs will pay attention?

[Ramsey]

2. As a Dean supporter

I am interested in his positions, past and present, the reasons why he may have changed positions over time (hardly a crime), what his policy positions are and why he believes in them. I don't expect to agree with every single position he takes, I never expect that of any candidate I support, it simply isn't possible. Ultimately, I will have to decide if the areas where I disagree with the candidate warrant withdrawal of my support or not. I am also interested in when and why he screws up, and I don't expect perfection, or even perfect consistency (as that is not humanly possible) but improvement and honing of his message. If he mispeaks, he needs to correct that or clarify his commments. Dean is hardly the only candidate to be guilty of such imperfection.

What I am not interested in is being referred to as a "Deaniac" or "Deanie Beanie" or any other derogatory term, particularly by people on my own team. I assure you I have never ever referred to the supporters of any other Democratic candidate by any sort of derisive term, nor will I. I totally fail to see how it furthers the discussion or inspires respect for your position. It is really just rude. In the end we will all need to rally around the nominee, whoever that may be. The interim name-calling is unnecessary.

[Romberry]

4. LOL!!! Oliphant has been..

...slamming Dean from day one. And if you will look just a little further down the message list, you'll see a link to the Terry Neal column in the WaPo that gives the lie to the Gephardt smear.

Next.

[Romberry]

3. No Oliphant, they are flat out false

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17608-2003Sep29.html

For months, the rap on Dean was that he was too liberal to win the general election. Lieberman has been leading the Dean-is-a-liberal-baddie charge for weeks. Now along comes Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), who is fending off a challenge by Dean in the crucial state of Iowa (see Sept. 17 Talking Points), firing away from the governor’s left flank with charges that he cozied up to GOP bogeyman Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s. Gephardt was on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday repeating charges that Dean sided with Gingrich in trying to cut Medicare.

It's somewhat of an odd charge, given that Dean, then chairman of the National Governors Association, first caught the eye of the national media with his exceedingly harsh denunciations of the new Gingrich-led Congress in 1995, the year after the historic Republican Revolution. The Dean campaign has noted that Dean appeared at several press conferences and events with Gephardt in 1995 to protest GOP plans to overhaul the welfare system and press for a balanced budget amendment.

In the archives of The Washington Post we find this story that Balz wrote in January 1995:

"The chairman of the National Governors' Association, Democratic Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, yesterday ripped into the Republicans' welfare reform plan as a policy 'to starve children and kick old people out of their houses’ and attacked Republican governors in extraordinarily harsh language for helping to negotiate it.

"Dean said the plan, outlined Friday in Washington, is the work of 'extremists who have taken over Congress.' In a telephone interview, he vowed, 'I'll be damned if I'm going to let extremists take over the National Governors' Association.'"

So it rankles Dean that Gephardt is accusing him of being Gingrich's toadie. Dean reiterated Saturday that Gephardt had taken his comments on Medicare out of context. Dean says his criticism was of the Medicare program's sloppy and inefficient bureaucracy, not of the program itself.