Scott Tibbs
blog post
August 3^rd, 2005

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean launched another attacks on Republicans, but his rant was long on hyperbole and short on facts. Dean blamed "the president and his right-wing Supreme Court" for the Court's recent decision on property rights, when the conservatives on the court (including Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, both of whom the President has publicly praised) were the ones who dissented.

Howard Dean is a pop-off. He engages his mouth without thinking of how his words will play once they hit the airwaves and the news wires. While Dean is a darling of the AssMoTax wing of the Democratic Party, the Democrats need to worry about appealing to a wider base than Left-wing activists.

I would be surprised if Dean is not shown the door before the 2008 Presidential elections. He hurts Democrats by being the face and mouth of the party and I suspect Republicans will tie their Democratic opponents to him in the 2006 elections. In addition, whoever the Democrats nominate in 2008 will not want to share the stage with Dean when he (or she) will need the media focused on him. The prospect of being asked about Dean's outbursts would also not be appealing to the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate.

Dean also blasted the President for appointing John Bolton to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, whining that the President's act was an abuse of power. What is important to remember, however, is that Democrats used the filibuster to prevent an up-or-down vote on Bolton in the first place. Faced with partisan opposition from Senate Democrats, Bush sidestepped them and used his authority to appoint Bolton while the Senate was out of session. Had the Democrats allowed a vote (instead of trying to require a 60-vote supermajority for Bolton to be confirmed) this controversy could have been avoided.

Some folks over on AssMoTax responded to my earlier post on Howard Dean blasting Republicans on the eminent domain issue.

I guess Dean is doing very well. What in the thunder Republicans think the leader of the opposing party is suppose to do? Attack the Republican party, DUH!

Yes, one can expect the chairman of the Democratic Party will criticize Republicans. It is also reasonable to expect that Howard Dean would be honest when doing so.

The fact of the matter is that it was the conservatives on the Supreme Court who opposed the eminent domain ruling. Two of those four votes were Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, who are arguably the most conservative Justices on the Court. They have both been publicly praised by President Bush. Meanwhile, Leftists on the Court (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was appointed by Disgraced ex-President Clinton) were the ones who sided against the homeowners. For Dean to blame a decision by left-leaning Supreme Court justices on conservatives is more than dishonest. It is a lie.

Instead of addressing the massive holes in Dean's rant, local Leftists simply complain that Dean is being attacked. This is partisanship at its worst, and is one of the reasons so many Americans are turned off by politics. Hyperpartisans cling to the belief that anything said by someone in their party is OK, no matter how counter-factual, dishonest or illogical that statement may be.

Another Leftist went so far as to claim that Dean was right to blame the conservatives on the court:

(Dean) blames conservative justices for it. Some error and some truth there. Maybe even more truth than we understand, as the minority may have taken a postion that agreement with them would have been impossible if you still wished to uphold public interest being part of public use. Just maybe their stance made compromise impossible, hence the majority ruling that maintained public interest as public use and economic development as public interest. Thomas dissent in particular based upon some esoteric natural rights perspectives would have overturned settled law on takings.

The post stretches logic so far it is laughable. Scalia and Thomas voted that this abuse of eminent domain was unconstitutional because they supported that very abuse? How exactly would a Supreme Court ruling that the use of eminent domain to give one person's property to a developer for "economic development" is unconstitutional make such an abuse of power more likely? I wonder if he would dare to make the same silly argument on Tuesdays, when he is guest host of the Afternoon Edition on AM 1370?

Again, what we have here are Leftists flailing to defend an indefensible statement by the chairman of the DNC. Is it so hard to examine a statement for logical validity and factual accuracy, instead of automatically defending anything said by someone with a "D" next to his name? For some Monroe County Democrats, the answer to that question is a solid "no", and that is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with American politics.