Kaus For Kucinich?

Is Mickey Kaus Cuckoo for Kucinich! NO! But his latest, self-admittedly paranoid post about Howard Dean, titled "How Anti-War Is Dean, Really?", questions the authenticity of Howard Dean's anti-war position.

Not all of us have followed Dennis the Menace with an eagle eye. However, his army of supporters has been developing this very theme, as we see from a Kucinich website article helpfully titled "WHO IS THE ANTIWAR CANDIDATE -- DEAN OR KUCINICH? "

The Kucinich posting has lots of juicy quotes, but where are the links? Jiminy, is this candidate ready for the 21st century? Here we go with the footnotes, as we trace the evolution of the Dean position:

Sept. 23, 2002, DEAN -- Might Endorse Pre-Emptive Strike. From the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

Sept. 29, 2002 - Messrs. Dean and Kucinich on CBS Face the Nation. Team Special K does not emphasize this, but the appearance gave us this oft-cited Dean passage:

There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. The question is, is he an immediate threat? The president has not yet made the case for that.

...And if Saddam persists in thumbing his nose at the inspectors, we are clearly going to have to do something about it. But I'm not convinced yet and the president has not yet made the case, nor has he ever said, this is an immediate threat.

In fact, the only intelligence that has been put out there is the British intelligence report, which says he is a threat but not an immediate one.

Later in the show, Mr. Dean extends "they never said it was imminent" to include the President's surrogates. Of course, it was late September when he spoke - check the timeline! And let's note the Dean reversal by June 2003, which drolly comments on "revisionist historians".

Sorry, imminent diversion. Back to the evolution of Howard Dean:

February 19, 2003 DEAN -- Unilateral Action Is...Unavoidable Choice. This excerpts a Salon article by Jake Tapper, which is heavily excerpted here.

So, what of Mickey's concern that "Dean shifted to a strong anti-war position not because of Bush's Iraq actions, but because he saw that that was where the Democratic party's activist base wanted him to go."

Well, how do we judge a person's secret heart, anyway? Are Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman as mad as they appear, or does it simply help sell books?

And a related question - is anyone bold enough to extrapolate from the Sept. 29 Face The Nation broadcast just how Howard Dean might have voted on the Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq?

Bonus Aside - fans of the "imminent threat" debate will note that the resolution cites a "continuing threat" from Iraq; the phrase "imminent threat" was proposed and rejected (or so I have read).

Yes, the resolution has a certain "blank check" quality. But, as John Kerry has twisted himself into knowt trying to explain, when you skip past the "whereas" clauses, you come to this:

The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the President to--

(1) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq and encourages him in those efforts; and

(2) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

Which sounds quite a bit like Dean 09.2002. Just asking.

Lots of Dean news links at Disinfopedia.

MORE: I am feeling quite pleased with "Cuckoo for Kucinich", which currently comes up empty on "Google".

However, since the grueling debate about whether Gen. Clark is "Ross Perot crazy", I am tempted by the nickname of Wesley "Cuckoo" Clark. [Note - been done, in a Newsmax story notable both for its creative title and creative storytelling.]

I hope none of you think our decisions are easy here in the VRWC.

Comments

[Emma]

This was all calculated to get me to respond, wasn't it? (Like Krugman, I'm also insane. The nature of my disease is apparently world-revolves-around-me-ism.)

But wait! As a loyal Kucitizen, you anticipate that I'll wade in and light up the good doctor. Not so fast, buster. Methinks you have evil design and I smells me a trap: rounding up the "circular firing squad" are you?

Dean's not a bad guy, and he's not disengenous. But, as a former guv, his foreign policy experience isn't vast. So he worked through the issues on the war. Let's see: who didn't? (True, true, I didn't -- http://www.genfoods.net/default.asp?pid=7701989 -- or perhaps that's my mental disease flaring up again.)

And let's recall that your candidate, at this point in the last election, didn't know who the PM of Injah was, much less having sophisticated opinions on war and peace. (Do your recall in the debates, he suggested we ought to turn the Kosovo situation over to the Russians--and that was before he'd looked into Pooty Poot's soul.)

It's a year from the campaign, and Dean's getting his message together. This Kucitizen ain't gonna go after him for inconsistency. There are plenty of policy differences for us to quibble about.

(And yes, you deserve a special reward for Cuckoo for Kucinich. A link at the very least.)

[TM]

Darn, my evil plots ain't what they used to be.

However, even "me-too-ists" have real fan clubs, or people goading them, or something.

[Ratherworried]

I guess we all have to wonder what those who would not support the war would have actually done. It has been well documented that nearly every elected official believed that Saddam had WMD and during the Clinton administration wanted to go after Saddam (or at least they said so).

I think Kucinich has at least been consistent, but wrong, about military intervention.

Dean, you may remember had twisted himself in knots over our intervention in Liberia versus the War in Iraq. He was in favor of U.S. force in Liberia because of human rights abuses but not in Iraq?!!?!! Not surprisingly some of us are finding that position just a tad tortured which leads one to question whether Dean is anti-War or just pro-pandering.

[HH]

Of course one can hardly afford to "work through" their foreign policy beliefs now like they could prior to Sept. 11...

[sym]

"Yet he did it again when he claimed that he would have become a Republican if only Karl Rove had simply returned his phone calls.

Turns out Clark not only never phoned Rove at the White House, but Rove can’t remember ever having talked to Clark, either."
That newsmax piece you link to is really nasty. It just lies and lies.
As for Liberia, the argument Dean could make is that intervening in Liberia would be easy, while invading Iraq, not so much. One of those conservative cost/benefit analyses things.

[TM]

Troubling. Anyone who follows all the links we find rebuttals for the Newsmax piece, and all I wanted was the title. I think I have an answer.