The Friday edition of the New York Times reports that tapes
have surfaced
that show Gov. Howard Dean denounced the Iowa caucuses as
representing the "extremes" of American
politics controlled by special interests and praised President Bush as a "moderate"
who he predicted would be reelected in 2004. He
went on to add that he believed Bush's philosophy was "if
you're rich you deserve it and if you're poor you deserve
it". Some parts of the more than 90 tapes of Dr. Dean
were shown on
NBC and MSNBC on Thursday. From 1996 to 2002 Dr. Dean
was a panelist on "The Editors" which was
shown on Canadian Broadcasting and some U.S. PBS stations.
George Bush, I believe, is in his soul a moderate...I believe
that George Bush's philosophy in life is, if you're rich you
deserve it and if you're poor you deserve it.
If you look at the caucuses system, they are dominated by
the special interests in both parties, he said. [And]
the special interests don't represent the centrist tendencies of
the American people. They represent the extremes. And then you
get a president who is beholden to either one extreme or the
other, and where the average person is in the middle...
"Say I'm a guy who's got to work for a living, and
I've got kids," he said on the show on Jan. 15, 2000.
"On a Saturday, is it easy for me to go cast a ballot and
spend 15 minutes doing it, or do I have to sit in a caucus for
eight hours?"
A moment later, he added, "I can't stand there and
listen to everyone else's opinion for eight hours about how to
fix the world."`
An article about the tapes on the MSNBC Web site includes
more excerpts. It shows that in January 1998, Dr. Dean speculated
that there "will probably be good and bad" if the
Islamic militants of Hamas take over the Palestinian leadership.
Rob is
the founder and editor of the progressive news site robwire.com and is a
frequent contributor to rob.dailykos.com