Dr. Demento is Back

Howard Dean, DNC Chairman, and God's gift to Karl Rove and the GOP, appearing on Meet The Press (empasis added)...

DR. DEAN: ...But the thing that really bothered me the most, which the 9-11 Commission said also wasn't true, is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false. The 9-11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, said it was false. Is it wrong to send people to war without telling them the truth. And the truth was Osama bin Laden was a very bad person who was doing terrible things, but that Iraq was never a threat to the United States.

(hat tip: Instapundit and Jackson's Junction). As Instapundit noted, if Bush had said, the Left would be all over the remark. Of course, maybe Dean thinks Osama's innocent anyhow.

Actually, here's the part of the transcript that really lit a fire under me...

MR. RUSSERT: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. `I'm not very dignified,' Dean said."

DR. DEAN: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified.

MR. RUSSERT: But is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who has gone into therapy and the abuse for drug addiction?

DR. DEAN: Here's the point I was trying--as most of these things are taken by the Republicans, spun around Washington saying this in a one sentence, which I generally had said. But then they're sort of manipulated around, saying this is the kind of thing he said. The Rush Limbaugh comment was one that I made about Rush Limbaugh, and I also said something about Bill O'Reilly. The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction. That's a medical problem. And I respect those who clearly, in my profession, who are trying to overcome their problems.

The problem is it is galling to Democrats, 48 percent of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don't think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people--I think the Bible says something to the effect that be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven't removed the moat from your own eye. And I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves.

Rush Limbaugh has made a career of belittling other people and making jokes about President Clinton, about Mrs. Clinton and others. I don't think he's in any position to do that, nor do I think Bill O'Reilly is in a position to abuse families of survivors of 9/11, given his own ethical shortcomings. Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.

Oh, up yours, Dr. Demento.

How does this tie into your own party's lectures regarding House Majority leader Tom Delay? Plenty of people within your party see fit to attack Mr. Delay despite their own ethical shortcomings. Do you have the same words for them?

I am sick and tired of Democrats who whine about being attacked and claim it's unfair. You know, I'm sick of Democrats who seem to think Republicans just want screw widows and orphans while providing tax breaks to rich people and evil polluting corporations. But I don't stand around complaining about the rhetoric from the other side -- I know that my party doesn't believe in hurting children and old people, despite the demogoguary. Most Republicans don't spend their time on the defensive, because they know better about their own beliefs. Perhaps Democrats get defensive about being called a bunch of whiny anti-religious moral relativists because the label fits.

Next, don't give me this crap that I can't express an opinion about another person's ethical shortcomings. Forget freedom of speech concerns, although maybe this is dean's way of supporting McCain-Feingold. Based on Dean's comments, Jesus might well be the only person available to comment on the personal actions of various politicians and whether they're immoral.

Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. If Rush Limbaugh has a drug problem, is he somehow unfit to comment on the extramarital activities of President Clinton? Or the pro-abortion stance of Hillary Clinton? You may call him a hypocrite for having his own shortcomings, but that doesn't make him wrong. Dean can criticize Limbaugh for his drug addiction, even if Dean happens to be a kleptomaniac (I have no idea if that's true or not; I'm just using it as an example).

And that's where Dean and his cohorts get it wrong. Some of us believe Limbaugh's drug abuse is wrong. We think the same thing about Clinton's extra-marital affairs, and about abortion. Even if we have engaged in behavior that we ourselves judge to be morally wrong (if we've abused drugs, cheated on a spouse or had an abortion), that doesn't mean our opinion on the issue is wrong. You may question our motivation for making the claim, or call us a hypocrite for our own failings. But that doesn't in any way excuse the behavior or answer the criticism that it's wrong. If you don't think the behavior is wrong, then you have to defend it, not point to the other side's appalling shortcomings.

I'd love to see Democrats get up and defend the stances that keep losing elections, rather than trying to talk about how they have their own moral values and the GOP has its own shortcomings. If you believe in abortion on demand, explain to those religious folks who think it's murder why you don't believe it is, rather than trying to distract them by talking about some other issue. If you think gay people should have the right to get married, stand up for it, and tell people who might not vote for you that you don't give a damn because you believe you're right. Granted, they still won't vote for you, but they may respect you.

In the end, the reason Democrats fail is because they don't have a coherent position on most policy issues anyway. But the reason they face a values deficit compared to the GOP is that most people trust them less, because they're fundamentally not honest about who they are. Howard Dean isn't changing that -- all he's doing is changing the volume.