First Door on the Left

WASHINGTON — A comment by Howard Dean about Confederate flags and pickup trucks has embroiled the leading Democrats in Iowa’s presidential caucuses in a name-calling donnybrook.

“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying in Saturday’s Des Moines Register. “We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats.”

Dean said Saturday that he was intending to encourage the return of Southern voters who have abandoned the Democrats for decades but are disaffected with the Republicans.

Two Democrat rivals competing against Dean in Iowa’s leadoff Jan. 19 caucuses saw the comment differently.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, who shares the lead in Iowa with Dean, accused Dean of making a blatant move to win the votes of people “who disagree with us on bedrock Democratic values like civil rights.”

“I don’t want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” Gephardt said in a statement. “I will win the Democratic nomination because I will be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks.”

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts contended that Dean’s “pandering” to the National Rifle Association gave him an inroad to “pander to lovers of the Confederate flag.”

Dean’s comment was reported in story about Kerry’s criticism of Dean’s record on guns. The senator claimed that Dean was an NRA favorite who opposed a 1994 law that banned assault weapons to civilians.

“I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA,” Kerry said in a statement.

In response to the criticism, Dean released a statement saying: “I want people with Confederate flags on their trucks to put down those flags and vote Democratic — because the need for quality health care, jobs and a good education knows no racial boundaries.

“We have working white families in the south voting for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent while their children remain with no health care,” Dean said. “The dividing of working people by race has been a cornerstone of Republican politics for the last three decades — starting with Richard Nixon. … The only way we’re going to beat George Bush is if southern white working families and African-American working families come together under the Democratic tent, as they did under FDR.”

The two southerners in the Democratic race, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas, also protested. “Some of the greatest civil rights leaders, white and black, have come from the South,” said Edwards. “To assume that southerners who drive trucks would embrace this symbol is offensive.”

Clark said, “The Confederate flag flies in the face of our most deeply held American values — diversity, equality and inclusion.”

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman weighed in as well. “Governor Dean ought to be more careful about what he says,” Lieberman said. “It is irresponsible and reckless to loosely talk about one of the most divisive, hurtful symbols in American history.”

Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright told The Associated Press that Dean had previously used the Confederate flag image in his campaign.

One instance came Feb. 22 at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. Dean said the men with Confederate flag decals in their pickup trucks represented lucrative prospects for the party “because their kids don’t have health insurance, either, and their kids need better schools, too.”

The party elite stood and cheered.

Dr. Dean used the line about the Confederate flag in the first speech I ever heard him deliver, and he’s used it in just about every speech I’ve heard him deliver since. So why, now, all of a sudden, are the other candidates for the Democratic nomination jumping on it?

My guess is that it is because it is now becoming clear that Dr. Dean probably will be the Democratic nominee in 2004 for the Presidency of the United States.

George W. Bush campaigned on the promise that he was a “uniter, not a divider.” I think we can all see how that turned out. Yet, how much more divisive can candidates be than when they make statements like “I don’t want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks” and “I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA?”

Rather than dismiss the “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” wouldn’t it be better to try to find out why those Confederate flags are there in the first place? I’ve always thought that the name “United States” was somewhat of an oxymoron. States they may be, but united they are not. Isn’t it time they were?

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Republican National Committee Friday asked CBS to allow a team of historians and friends of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife to review a miniseries about the couple before it airs.

Republicans have expressed concern that the miniseries, titled “The Reagans,” may inaccurately portray the couple.

In a conference call with reporters, RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie said he sent the request to CBS Television President Leslie Moonves.

Gillespie said that if CBS denies the request, he will ask the network to run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program’s presentation informing viewers that the miniseries is not accurate.

Since when does the Republican party get the right to censor a television miniseries? Were the Democrats given the opportunity to censor that horrible “DC 9/11″ movie that Showtime ran a while back? Did they run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program’s presentation informing viewers that the movie was not accurate?

Is this what our country is coming to? Is everything that is shown on television, printed in newspapers or said on the radio going to have to be approved by the Republicans first?

This is beginning to get scary.

Somewhat along the same lines… Did you know that today is the last day of “Protection From Pornography Week, 2003?” Yep, George W. Bush declared the week of October 26 through November 1, 2003, as Protection From Pornography Week. Makes you feel safer just knowing that the leader of the free world is on top of this, doesn’t it? (via Michael)

In a speech to university students, MSNBC host Chris Matthews characterized President Bush as a shallow-thinking, unlearned man who when confronted by aides with the decision about going to war with Iraq was given something to think about for the first time in his life.

The Bush administration’s rationale for the Iraq war was “nonsense” and totally dishonest, Matthews told a gathering of 200 students at Brown University this week, according to the Woonsocket Call newspaper in Rhode Island.

Vice President Richard Cheney was “behind it all,” contended Matthews, who served as an aide to the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts and wrote speeches for former President Jimmy Carter.

“The whole neo-conservative power vortex, it all goes through his office,” Matthews said, referring to Cheney, according to the paper. “He has become the chief executive. He’s not the chief operating officer, he’s running the place. It’s scary.”

The vice president, he asserted, is the man “who put his thumb on the scale” to affect the balance between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“The ideologues started circling around the president,” Matthews said, according to The Call. “They saw a man who never read any books, who didn’t think too deeply and they gave him something to think about for the first time in his life. This thing called pre-emption, the Bush Doctrine. They put it in his head and said ‘Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.’”

Sources tell WND that management at MSNBC are becoming increasingly perturbed at Matthews for his outspoken criticism of Bush.

The commentator acknowledged the president has some “clear strengths” and is the favorite in next year’s election.

Bush had a “King Arthur moment,” he said, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center and declared into a bullhorn “‘the people who knocked these buildings down are going to hear from all of us.’ He pulled the sword out of the stone.”

Matthews disclosed he favors former Vermont governor Howard Dean for president in 2004, according to the Rhode Island daily.

There isn’t a whole lot I can add. I think Mr. Matthews has hit the nail right on the head. I was somewhat surprised, however, at the website on which this article appeared. WorldNetDaily generally leans more to the right. There are a couple of paragraphs toward the end of the article, though, that are definitely more WND’s style.