Howard Dean Slams Iowa Caucus and Calls Bush 'Moderate'

Howard Dean Slams Iowa Caucus and Calls Bush 'Moderate'

NewsMax.com
Friday, Jan. 9, 2004

Howard Dean said that the Iowa caucuses are a waste of time, that George Bush is a moderate, and even suggested that there was some good to be found in the Hamas terrorist group.

Howard Dean has been caught on videotape.

In the late '90s Dean was a frequent guest on "The Editors," a roundtable panel of politicians, journalists and policy gurus who discussed American and Canadian politics.

On Thursday night, NBC "Nightly News" aired clips from the tapes.

The network said the videos demonstrate not only Howard Dean's "wide-ranging intellect" but also his "shifting views" on many public policy issues.

The NBC News Investigative Unit obtained the videotapes of 90 of Dean's appearances on the program from 1996 to 2002.

Dean has been criticized for shooting from the hip. The NBC report appears to buttress that claim.

The videotapes show numerous positions that candidate Dean may clearly regret having made, including:

Slamming Iowa Caucus: “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.”

Worries about Al Gore: “He has a lot of attributes, but … there are some things that I am concerned about. One of them is being quick on your feet. He is not.”

George Bush: "George Bush, I believe, is in his soul a moderate." Dean now calls Bush a "radical."

Republicans and affirmative action: Dean said Republicans who question race-based preferences are "out-and-out racists."

On NAFTA: "I’m a little nervous about NAFTA. I was a big supporter four years ago. I’m worried about the condition of Mexican workers around the maquiladoras. And I had hoped that NAFTA would boost the Mexican standard of living."

On terrorist group Hamas: [There] "will probably be good and bad" if Hamas takes control over the Palestinian leadership. Yasser Arafat, he said, "is going to leave the scene. ... When that happens, I think Hamas will probably take over. There will probably be good and bad out of that. The bad, of course, is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. However, if they have to run a quasi-state they may actually have to be more responsible and start negotiations. So who knows what will happen."

Which Howard Dean is the real Howard Dean? With so many flip-flops, it's hard to tell right now.

But Dean may turn out to be prophetic. In December of 2000, he suggested that it was a "mistake" to think George Bush would turn out to be a one-term president.

Editor's note:
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