From the wire release:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland) today condemned the comments of presidential candidate and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who said, "John Ashcroft is not a patriot," in New Hampshire yesterday.
"Howard Dean is a cruel and extremist demagogue," DeLay said.
Eh? "Demagogue" is a standard term of random abuse in politics, and "extremist", from the right-wing Republicans that run the US these days, merely means "standardly left-wing, like, you know, all those people that run European countries". But "cruel"? Where the hell does that come from? What evidence does DeLay have that Dr Dean is cruel?
"John Ashcroft loves America more than Howard Dean could ever know. John Ashcroft has sacrificed for his country, and devoted his life to serving it.
Or, "John Ashcroft is a nice guy, and he's had a lot of government jobs, and he cares." And Howard Dean doesn't have personal experience of that.
That's as may be. But that's not the point. What Dean is saying is that Ashcroft is wrong. Misguided, hasn't seen the entire picture, is blinded by partisan viewpoints; wrong. Answering policy objections on an emotive level is to insult the American public.
He is as kind, generous, and patriotic a man as I've ever met.
OK, here comes the partisan snide comment: that doesn't necessarily mean that he is in any way kind, generous and patriotic. Everyone else Tom DeLay has met may have been utter shits.
More seriously, it doesn't require that he is kind and generous to everyone (he may be only kind and generous to people he meets at the same time as he's with Tom DeLay, and those people are likely to be Republicans).
And Howard Dean is as ignorant on John Ashcroft as he is on national security."
Howard Dean is running for President. John Ashcroft is a Cabinet official for the President Dean hopes to defeat, and, should all go according to Dean's plan, will shortly be irrelevant. Why does it follow that, from Dean's point of view, intimate knowledge of Ashcroft should be held as important as knowledge of the issues of national security?
"Howard Dean's comments are an embarrassment to the democratic process and the Democrat Party.
Howard Dean is, depending on your mood, calling his opponents liars and scoundrels, or stealing their clothes and rebranding their rhetoric to suit his own purposes. These tactics are time-honoured democratic tools and should be expected in any serious political debate.
More seriously, calling for a debate on what "patriot" and "patriotic" mean is exactly what a democratic debate is about. Conversely, insisting that words should mean only what you desire them to mean is verging perilously on Orwellian doublespeak and fascism.
If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democrat crop, next Novembers going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker.
You can't have it both ways. Either Dean is convincing, but evil, in which case you need to persuade Americans not to vote for him, because he's wrong but could well hoodwink well-thinking Americans into voting for him for President, and denying Bush the second term he should have rightly won. Or Dean is fundamentally unconvincing and wrong, in which case you shouldn't be arguing against him, as your party will inevitably win against the feckless ultra-liberal candidate from Vermont, and you're better wasting your breath on Kerry or Lieberman or someone.
