Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean came under withering questioning from "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert Sunday. Dean continued to insist that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay should be treated more harshly than Osama bin Laden. Dean also came under fire for his heated rhetoric against Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly – and his flip-flopping on key issues like abortion.
In a pointedly embarrassing interview with NBC's Tim Russert, the DNC chairman spent almost the entire program under withering attack as Russert demonstrated Dean's hypocrisy on past comments.
Dean had been strongly backed for the DNC post by the party's hysterically anti-GOP left – notably Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Al Gore. The liberal troika had seen Dean as a counterweight to Hillary Clinton's growing power and her and her husband's desire to move the party to the center.
Rather than using the national program as a platform to launch broadsides against the Bush administration and aggressively tout the Democrats' agenda, Dean appeared mired in his own past.
During the show, Dean claimed, "Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party," and he vowed to Russert that "I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy."
Ironically, Russert played the hypocrisy-exposing role as he repeatedly unmasked Dean's integrity on key issues. Dean defended his declaration last week that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay should begin serving a jail sentence.
"I think Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence down there courtesy of the Texas taxpayers," Dean said on May 14.
Dean stuck to his guns, telling host Tim Russert: "He hasn't been convicted yet, but ... I think there's a reasonable chance that this may end up in jail."
Russert asked if it was appropriate that Dean has Ok'd the posting of a bogus mug shot of DeLay on the DNC Web site, suggesting that the Republican has already been charged with a crime.
Dean sidestepped the issue, saying that DeLay should not be serving in Congress. In his answer, Dean then claimed, incredibly, that the Democrats are "not going to stoop to the kind of divisiveness that the Republicans are doing." Huh?????????????
On the hot-button issue of abortion, Dean said he was against the procedure in one breath, but in the next he defended the far more gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion.
Noting that "there are significant numbers of pro-life Democrats in the South," the DNC chief said he wanted "to strike the words 'abortion' and 'choice'" from the Democrat lexicon.
Instead, Dean advised, "The way it ought to be framed ... is 'Do you want Tom DeLay and the boys to make up your mind about this, or does a woman have a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets.'"
Moments later, however, the top Democrat was defending partial-birth abortion, insisting, "I don't think that there is an ethical doctor in America who will do a third-term abortion without there being a reason like the health and life of the mother."
Russert countered by noting that "several heads of the American Medical Association endorsed banning third-term abortions because they said life of the mother is one thing but the health is a much different issue. It can be defined in so many different ways, it was a major loophole."
A deflated Dean responded: "It is an incredibly difficult area. It is an area which is conflicted."
Dean also insisted that both pro-choicers and pro-lifers could work together on "common ground” – that both sides wanted to greatly reduce the number of abortions in America.
Despite Dean's claims, Russert noted that at almost every turn the Democrats oppose efforts to restrict abortion.
"But, Governor, the problem for Democrats has been that many request abortion on demand, "Russert said, adding, "When there are attempts to say that there should be parental notification for children under 18 – to be notified with a judicial bypass, if there's a spouse, a parental abuse situation – many Democrats oppose it. Third-trimester abortion, 'partial-birth' abortion, Democrats opposed it. ... President Clinton vetoed it. Every time there's a vote to restrict abortion, the majority of the Democrats seem to vote against it."
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