Bush's 2004 Campaign Chief: "Kerry Was Right"

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/washington/01adviser.html?hp=&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1175368218-cyyjPeRPtD7iIVo8lP6hOw&pagewanted=print

April 1, 2007
Ex-Aide Details a Loss of Faith in the President
By JIM RUTENBERG

AUSTIN, Tex., March 29 — In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.

...

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.

Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast Senator John Kerry as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security during wartime, said he had even written but never submitted an op-ed article titled “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq.

“I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”

[bluerum]

1. Burn in hell Dowd, if they will have you. eom.

[deutsey]

2. Now you tell us.

:evilfrown:

[JI7]

3. is he going to sell a book

or actually be active in stopping Bush ?

[CTyankee]

9. Heh, what do you think? He knows the wind direction has changed and so

he has changed with it. He should spare us the breast beating. If you want to come over to the light, do it. Don't bore us with your moaning and groaning.

[Stardust]

10. I smell a book, big time.

:puke: Not ONE of the ship-jumping rats has been active in stopping him.:mad:

[WinkyDink]

16. And he'll count on DEMOCRATS to buy it. No, thanks!

[GCP]

4. He should have read "Shrub" before becoming a republican

Everybody in the country should have read it. But this asswipe is too late IMHO.

[sandnsea]

5. "I'm melting, I'm melting"

"My future is slipping awaaay... where did all the Bushies go..."

Go fuck yourself Mr. Dowd

[Pharaoh]

6. Another rat jumping ship

nutjobs all of them,

[John Q. Citizen]

7. 'Shrub tricked me!' Shocking, revealing true story account of a dumb shit

who let the country go to hell in a hand basket and the remarkable redemption and remaking of his very soul!



First, give back the money. Then we will talk.

[The Count]

8. A day too late, a dollar too short...

[ProSense]

11. Background on the traitor:

And at that time, it's interesting, Karl had already put together much of the core team that has carried Bush in 2000 and again in 2004. He had Matt Dowd on board in 1998 for the gubernatorial campaign, and he had Mark McKinnon on board. Next year Ken Mehlman will join, basically in Texas, three of what really is about a five-member triumvirate who are already there. And right after the 1998 election, his key fund-raiser types already are meeting.

<...>

Where Karl has shown real skill is finding those people of money and as political strategists. Those two categories of people, he has been very good. There's a whole elite that has now come up with Karl that wasn't there in Washington six years ago. You have a guy named Tony Feather, who was the political director of the 2000 campaign. He is now a major direct mail voter-contact specialist. You've got Matt Dowd, who was a Texas Democrat in 1994, who is now probably the most respected polling and media strategist. You have Mark McKinnon, who was also a Texas Democrat and had actually worked for Ann Richards in 1994, who is now a major player who could put together himself this group called Maverick Media, a 12-member consortium of consultants, political and Madison Avenue, to basically do the Bush campaign. These guys, all of them -- Ken Mehlman, who's now head of the RNC -- these guys have moved up, and they are all Karl Rove protégés.

link

More here and here.

[blm]

18. Let's never forget the way BushInc uses Matalin to control Carville's loyalty

and all those around him. They're all just great friends.

How ANY Democrat can be friends with someone as evil as Karl Rove is beyond comprehension.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. Fuckim

That is all.

[catgirl]

13. Talk about a filp flopper!

Oh his son had to go to Iraq, so now he is against the war.

[Marr]

14. Uh... 2004? Bush had done all those things in his first term as well.

Sorry, but anyone who still supported Bush in 2004 was either a fascist, an asshole, a fool, or a Halliburton executive. There's alot of overlap between these populations, but Mr. Dowd must fit into at least one of them.

[MissWaverly]

15. Yes, the Abu Ghraib pictures had surfaced by then

many knew exactly what was going on but they raced to put Bush back in the White House
for 4 more years.

[Peace Patriot]

17. The problem was not that Bush was wrong, but that the voting system was wrong.

I won't accept any mea culpa that doesn't include that admission.

People are sometimes wrong. Leaders are sometimes wrong. And fascist leaders are almost always wrong. That is not the problem. The problem is how they could gain power in a democracy.

People like Dowd helped push a non-transparent vote counting system on the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. The vote counting system itself was fraudulent, and designed to be. You couldn't design a more easily riggable system. And where that didn't do enough of the trick, they smashed black voters to the ground, who had fought so hard for so many decades, for the right to vote. Just kicked them in the face, in every way possible. Purged them from the voting rolls. Put out disinformation sending people to the wrong polling place. Threw their votes away. The sheerness meanness of it was extraordinary.

Kerry was not only right, the voters were even more right than Kerry. 56% of them had said, in Feb. '03, "Don't do this war!" They were ignored. 63% of them said that they oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). Nothing was done. Torture continues to this day. And now 75% of the American people oppose this war and want it ended, and it still goes on--with a "surge" no less. 75% of the American people against the war, and a 50/50 Congress. What's wrong with this picture?

The vote counting system is what's wrong with this picture.

Dowd criticizes Bush for "ignoring the will of the people on Iraq." True enough.

But it is preceded by his criticism of Bush "as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war."

The thing is, there was no war. We were attacked--if the official story is even partly true--by a terrorist network, not by a country. That is police business--solvable by good intelligence, good police work and international cooperation. Bush TURNED IT INTO a war. His infamous "war on terra." And his even worse, completely unnecessary attack on Iraq, based on a pack of deliberately told lies. There is simply no way that you can "rally" the American people to an unjust, unnecessary, corporate resource war. So it wasn't that Bush failed to "call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice." It was that what he was "selling" was entirely bogus. And people didn't buy--even way back in Feb. '03.

If you're going to perpetrate an unjust, heinous war, in a democracy--especially one with Vietnam in living memory--you have to rig the elections. That's what they did.

Dowd plays to the ego of an unrighteous leader, in saying he "failed." He didn't fail. He rammed through this horrible series of crimes knowing very well that it was not something the American people supported, and his political minions rigged the elections to create a phony endorsement of it.

Finally, Dowd says he now sees the need to "restore balance." Unh-uh. We need to veer way, way over to the side of peace and justice, to right these terrible wrongs. Not "balance," no. Revolution. Overturning. Throwing Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor.' PUNISHING, with jail terms, all violators of the Voting Rights Act. And dismantling these bad actor, war profiteering, global corporate predators whose billionaire CEOs are oppressing us, and everyone in the world--and seizing their assets for the common good.

That's what's needed. There can be no "balance" in society's revulsion at these crimes. He laments that "things didn't turn out the way they should have." That's why he now wants "balance." And I can only conclude that "things turning out the way they should have" means a victorious, heinous, illegal war, and a successful fascist coup. One that got past us. One that was not exposed as anti-democratic and unamerican. One that succeeded in militarizing the country, and turning the national dialogue into one of a bunch of blithering idiot "talking heads" relentlessly pushing a Medieval, "flat earth" view of the world that would be threatening to set human progress back a thousand years, if it weren't so colossally stupid.

We have not rejected Bush because he was not a great leader. Where would he have led us? We have rejected Bush because he is the asshole puppet of the corporate rulers, who thought they had all the news and opinion forums completely monopolized so that we wouldn't figure out what a line of bull they were shoveling at us.

Well, the American people fooled Dowd and Co. They've had it pretty much figured out all along (Feb. '03!). Now they have to figure how the coup occurred, and how to undo all the harm, and how to restore this country, not to "balance," but to the great progressive tradition of justice and peace-making and constitutional government that Dowd's "failed" leader so thoroughly smashed to pieces.

[blm]

19. Agreed - it was the election PROCESS that was tainted - Kerry won the campaign battle

but then the RNC and its bag of dirty tricks dragged Bush back into office while the DNC sat on their hands and refused to spend their 4yrs countering the GOP's tactics to subvert, suppress and steal votes.

[Marr]

22. Couldn't agree more.

Saying the man who you helped to steal an election turned out to be a bad president is hardly an inspiring mea culpa. How about an admission of election fraud, and then move forward from there.

[Cha]

20. Of course! Kerry was/is right!

And a bigger majority would have known it in 2004 if we didn't have corporatemediawhores that don't want a Democrat to win.

:wtf: are we gonna do to insure that doesn't happen again? In 2008? With all the new bushbot USAttorneys in places like Arkansas, San Diego, Missouri, New Mexico, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan?

I'm so glad the weasel, gonzales lied that they were performing badly.."Not pleasuring him at all"..as it were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy#Bud_Cummins

[blm]

21. Add this to George Will's admission that Kerry was right on how to fight terrorism.

Too bad the Dem party elite spent most of 2005 and 2006 dumping on Kerry because THEY knew he was right and defrauded by and unsecured election process all along, too. So they had to mute his voice ASAP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk1k0nUWEQg

[Raine]

23. Dead Americans

on your head Mr. Dowd. :-(