Previous diary entries have discussed the suspicious rash of "Dean is a lying flip-flopper" articles this week, including:
We have
Dean's Remarks Give Rivals Talking Points in the WaPo and
Dean's Conflicting Iraq Comments Draw Scrutiny
at the LATimes.
Of course all of this suspiciously preceded by the piece at the NYTimes in which Adam Nagourney at least has the journalistic cojones to "out" Kerry's hatchet-woman (pun intended), Stephanie Cutter.
I think we can safely assume MSNBC's Tom Curry is also in Ms. Cutter's e-mail address book with Dean shifts on array of issues, which linked from the main MSNBC page as "Howard Dean's many flip-flops".
Say what you want about Dean and Trippi, they aren't going to let these types of shotgun attacks dominate more than one or two news cycles:
From Friday's LATimes, Dean Fires Back at Foes, Defends Position on War:
After several days of brushing off his rivals with a few glib asides, Dean responded with a denunciation that lumped Bush together with his Democratic opponents -- or, as he called them, the "Washington politics-as-usual club."
"I think the Democratic Party has to offer a clear alternative to the American people," Dean said in remarks hastily tacked onto the beginning of a long-planned speech on domestic policy at the Manchester City Library.
-snip-
Asked why he chose to deliver the comments he appended to his speech, Dean joked that "it's not my nature to be a wallflower." He denied any concern that the attacks were harming his campaign. Rather, he said, the criticisms of him hurt all Democrats.
"People see that and that turns them off the Democrats," he said, standing near the political science section in the library's basement. "I just thought it was time to stand up and make clear there was one Democrat who wasn't going to succumb to that sort of silliness."
Howard Dean: not a wallflower. ;-)