Redstate

Posted at 8:06am on Jun. 17, 2008 Breaking: DNC's, ah, *miserable failure* at raising convention cash confirmed.

I seem to have seriously underestimated Chairman Dean's desire for self-immolation.

By Moe Lane

I was certain that he would have been able to avoid the embarrassment. Well, it's not the first time that I've been wrong.

Denver $11.6M short of DNC fundraising goal

DENVER (AP) — Denver's host committee for the Democratic National Convention fell $11.6 million short of a $40.6 million fundraising goal set by the Democratic National Committee.

The $40.6 million was to be raised by a Monday midnight deadline. The host committee reported Monday it had raised $29 million.

Well, time to write that check, Senator Obama. Quickly: the City of Denver is not going to appreciate having to pick up the tab for your party. Whoops! Hold on. Not 11.6 million. $21.6 million: they actually need $50 million total, and it's for darn sure by now that you can't count on Dean to get the rest of the cash...

Moe Lane

PS: You're good for it, right? I only ask because you haven't released your May numbers yet.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | DNC | Howard Dean — Comments (21)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:26pm on Jun. 15, 2008 Annnnnd let the DNC's unseemly last minute scramble for money commence.

Please note: I fully expect them to scrape the money together by tomorrow. *Somehow.*

By Moe Lane

I mean, really: Howard Dean may be the most incompetent DNC chair in his Party's history, but surely even he can display a certain raw animal cunning when his back's to the wall like this.

DNC convention committee faces $15 million shortfall

DENVER (AP) — The host committee for the Democratic National Convention faces a possible shortfall of $15 million, complicating logistics for the August event and forcing it to abruptly postpone a media walkthrough of the site scheduled for next week.

The Democratic National Committee has asked the cash-strapped panel to raise $40.6 million by Monday to finance the event. Last month, the committee said it had just $25 million in cash, and it has failed to meet each of several fundraising deadlines since signing a contract with the DNC last year.

Via Ed Morrissey. If you were wondering why the Obama campaign is transplanting the DNC to Chicago, I suggest that the article might give you a hint as to why. If you were wondering why this would even be an issue, since Obama's going to have more money than Croesus by the end of June, I suggest... I suggest that you don't worry about it. Of course Obama will be able to make Howard Dean's problems go away, all with One Big Check.

Moe Lane

PS: What? Oh, apparently we're good. But thanks for asking.

PPS: Yes, I understand that there's often problems with putting money together for Presidential conventions. It's just that Howard Dean has been a really, really, really bad DNC Chair.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | DNC | Howard Dean | Things to Do In Denver When You're Broke — Comments (28)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:07pm on May 19, 2008 Harkin Up The Wrong Tree

Another of Barack Obama's Wonderful Friends

By Dan McLaughlin

Some things are fairly debable in politics, like how important it really is for a president to have military experience. For my own part, I've argued consistently that yes, it's a very useful experience but not in and of itself an essential one.

Some things are not really debatable, and one of those is that Tom Harkin embarrasses the good people of Iowa every time he opens his mouth on this particular topic. And I don't think he's exactly doing Barack Obama any favors either.

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Howard Dean | NRSC | Tom Harkin — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:00pm on May 6, 2008 Clinton Will Break the Democratic Party to Save It

You See, Obama has to be Cleared Away by the Hand of Hillary! like the McGovernites of Old. Now She will have to Burn this Party.

By Mark I

The Huffington Post has an update to their story of this past weekend saying that the Clinton campaign has confirmed that it plans to use a May 31st meeting of the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to try and seat the entire Michigan and Florida delegations at the Democratic National Convention. The Clinton campaign estimates that seating of the entire delegations from the two disputed states will give her a pledged delegate lead of around 55 delegates over Sen. Barack Obama.

In a statement released in response to the story, the campaign did not deny that it intended to exercise what the Huffington Post characterized as the "nuclear option." It only objected to the notion that the plan was a secret one.

There is no secret plan....The Clinton campaign has been vocal in stating that the votes of 2.5 million people must be respected. Hardly a day goes by when a Clinton official doesn't publicly declare that the votes of Michigan and Florida count and that the delegations from those states should be seated.

If the campaign follows through on this, it may be left to the ultimate superdelegate, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, to decide the Democratic nomination. Denver is going to be fun.

Read on…

Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Barack Obama | Democratic Party | Hillary Clinton | Howard Dean — Comments (35)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:07am on May 4, 2008 Howard Dean called our presence in Germany "occupation"

By Soren Dayton

I am watching Fox News Sunday. Howard Dean just said that our troop presence in South Korea and Germany are an "occupation."

I think that Obama used the same words the other day. And this seems to be standard lefty messaging:

McCain repeatedly and constantly evokes the long-term occupations of Korea, Japan, Germany, or Kuwait when discussing Iraq.

Posted at 7:48am on Apr. 30, 2008 FactCheck.org Agrees - DNC Takes Over Obama's Lies

By California Yankee

On Monday I went after Howard Dean and company for picking up Obama's lies with another less than truthful ad.

Now FactCheck.org has examined the Democrat's latest prevarications and found, once again, that the Democrats' ad "twists" what Senator McCain actually said:

The ad twists the sense of McCain's words by showing images of war, when he was really talking about a peaceful troop presence. Imagine how different the ad would seem if it showed images of, say, American troops walking the streets of Tokyo or Seoul and had included what McCain said about "Americans ... not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Anyone who didn't already know the fuller version of McCain's answer could easily be fooled into thinking that McCain would be perfectly happy to see the war continue. McCain has said quite clearly that he considers Democratic proposals for a quick withdrawal from Iraq to be "surrender," and so deadly fighting could well continue longer under a President McCain than under either a President Hillary Clinton or a President Obama. But what the DNC ad conveys is the opposite of what McCain said.

Read on, there's more.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | DNC | Economy | Howard Dean | Iraq | John McCain — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:38am on Apr. 28, 2008 DNC Takes Over Obama's Lies

By California Yankee

Howard Dean and Company pick up the lying where Barack Obama left off.

Barack Obama, after being beat up by numerous factcheckers for grossly misrepresenting Senator McCain's "100 Years" comment, finally dropped that distortion from his stump speech. Obama stopped using that discredited attack because it became obvious to all, even the admittedly Obamamania infected main stream media, that Obama's misrepresentation of McCain's comment was a "serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood."

Now the Democratic Party is out with an ad that not only continues the "Distortion," "Rank Falsehood," "Seriously Misleading" statements and "Outright Lying" about McCain's 100 year remarks, the Democrats' new ad is illegal as well:

New DNC Ad Quotes Sen. McCain Responding To A Question On How Long The U.S. Will Be In Iraq With The Words: “Maybe 100. That Would Be Fine With Me.” (DNC Website, www.democrats.org, Accessed 4/27/08)

Read on, there is more.

Posted in 100 Years | 2008 | Democrats | Howard Dean — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:29pm on Apr. 26, 2008 Obama, lobbyists, and the DNC

Will the DNC repudiate Obama's core message?

By Soren Dayton

Barack Obama and Howard Dean have been attacking John McCain for not being able to controlling the NC GOP. Let's see if Obama and Dean can control themselves.

Obama's central message has been the reform of Washington by not accepting money from lobbyists. But reports from USA Today makes clear that the message is a fraud:

Although Obama refuses direct campaign contributions from "Washington lobbyists," he takes money from lobbyists' spouses and holds fundraisers at the offices of law firms that lobby Congress. He won't touch money from PACs or lobbyists representing big oil and drug companies, but he happily accepts huge amounts of money from executives at those companies and many others. In fact, he's relying on two oil company executives to raise $50,000 apiece for his campaign.

This is old news, but it looks like Obama and Dean may have crossed a line. You see, the other day, they created a joint fundraising committee. So what?

The question for reporters will be this. Will Obama's first action as the de facto leader of his party will be to repudiate his fundamental message in the primary? See, here's the fundamental question. Will that committee take money from lobbyists? The DNC has made quite a lot of money of lobbyists, but let's see how bad this could be.

Read on.

Posted in Archived | Barack Obama | Democratic National Committee | Howard Dean — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:54pm on Apr. 18, 2008 Under pressure, Dean starts to come unraveled

Watching Howard Dean scream in slow motion

By Soren Dayton

Today, Howard Dean did something very silly. He demanded that John McCain apologize for something that Tom Tancredo said about immigration and the Catholic Church. For real.

Several problems with this. First, Tancredo has not endorsed McCain. Second, McCain's position is reasonably close to the Catholic Church's.

So what is going on? Dean's failures at the DNC are leading to his unraveling. Read on.

Posted in 2008 | DNC | Howard Dean — Comments (26)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:17am on Apr. 12, 2008 Shorter Howard Dean

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

"Really, it was everyone in the focus groups who brought up John McCain's age. Not us. We would never do that. And we have prepared a whole bunch of other Democrats who will go on and on and on and on and on about how they will never ever ever ever ever bring up the fact that John McCain is older than dirt."

In related news, subtlety is a lost art.

Posted in 2008 | Howard Dean | John McCain | Semi-Subliminal Attacks — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:11pm on Apr. 11, 2008 The Best Argument Against Romney

By Dan McLaughlin

OK, I've laid off Romney for a while, but I can't resist the final kiss of death:

"Mitt Romney was the candidate I feared the most," [Howard] Dean said at a press conference to unveil recent internal DNC polling on McCain, the expected Republican nominee.

Dean said in the early stages of the presidential race he thought Romney was the candidate to beat, in part because of his personal wealth, and also because he viewed Romney as the most articulate candidate who would "say anything" to win the nomination.

The two men share a geographical tie: Dean was governor of Vermont from 1991-2003, while Romney was governor of nearby Massachusetts from 2003-2007. "I know him from New England and I thought he was a better candidate than Republicans thought he was," the DNC chairman said.

So what does Dean identify as McCain's key weakness?

Dean said Democrats are "absolutely going to target" McCain as a flip-flopper, citing McCain’s initial opposition to the Bush tax cuts, which he now supports, as an example.

Pure political genius, that Howard Dean. H/T

Posted at 9:46am on Apr. 3, 2008 And they wonder why their numbers are slipping in Michigan?

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

What's a brother got to do to get a little love around here?  And no, that's not a Tom Athans joke.  I'm talking about Michigan, the Democrat National Committee, the two kids they have pulling hair and name calling in their primary contests and their chairman, Howard Dean.  

Posted in Barack | Breaking News | Clinton | Democrats | Howard Dean | Kwame | Michigan | prostitution | Scandal | Stabenow — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:56am on Mar. 30, 2008 Quotes That Catch My Fancy

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

"The real issue is this," Dean said in March 2004, when endorsing formal rival Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

--Howard Dean in 2004. As noted by Jake Tapper immediately after that passage:

McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Posted in 2008 | Howard Dean | Words Can Come Back To Haunt You — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:01pm on Mar. 29, 2008 McCain's Service Matters -- A Lot

Just Ask Howard Dean

By California Yankee

UPDATE:Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan calls on Hillary and Obama to denounce Dean's despicable attack on Senator John McCain's military service:

Yesterday, Howard Dean continued a pattern of making reckless statements attacking John McCain's character and integrity. Almost 24 hours later, Senators Obama and Clinton have yet to denounce the attack politics of their party's national chairman. Both Senators Clinton and Obama claim to repudiate the old politics of attack and smear, and yet neither has stood up and spoken to the issue. So today, I call on both Senators Obama and Clinton to denounce Howard Dean for stating that Senator McCain is a 'blatant opportunist' for discussing his record of military service with the American people.

What are the odds Hillary or Obama will do the right thing?

Yesterday I took Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to task for calling John McCain an opportunist for using images of his military service.

Jack Tapper points out that Dean saw things differently in 2004, when he thought military service was less opportunistic:

"The real issue is this," Dean said in March 2004, when endorsing formal rival Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

McCain has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Can anyone say "Yeaaaahhhhhhghhhh"

Via Jack Givens at Ft. Hard Knox and Kevin Gregory at McClatchy Watch.

Posted in 2008 | Howard Dean | John McCain — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »