Every time Howard Dean says something controversial and faces criticism, he seems to get backing from those whose help he doesn’t want.
In September, Dick Gephardt began aggressively criticizing Dean’s record of hostility for Medicare, noting that Dean sided with Republicans in the mid-1990s when congressional Democrats were fighting Newt Gingrich’s proposed Medicare cuts. As an example of the kind of help Dean probably didn’t want, Gingrich leapt to Dean’s defense.
A few weeks later, Dean got into some trouble for comments regarding Israel, saying he doesn’t want the U.S. “taking sides” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and calling members of Hamas “soldiers,” instead of the description generally used by Americans, “terrorists.” When several Jewish groups and leaders criticized Dean’s comments, the Arab-American Institute defended Dean and praised his position of neutrality. Like Gingrich’s defense, this probably wasn’t the support Dean was looking for.
And now it’s happened again. Last week, Dean was the subject of another controversy stemming from a poorly-worded remark, this time about his desire to be the candidate “for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” After days of criticism from Dem rivals such as Al Sharpton and John Edwards, who steps up to defend Dean’s comments? The Council of Conservative Citizens.
As you may recall, the CCC is a transparently racist organization that grew out of the “White Citizens Councils” of the old, strictly segregated, South. The group boasts that it “speaks out” on behalf of “white European-Americans, their civilization, faith and form of government,” and believes the very idea of racism “was concocted by a communist ideologues in the 1920s…to instill guilt and shame in the minds of white people and to inflame racial hostility among blacks.”
Yet there was the CCC defending Dean last week, with an open letter to the Vermont governor on its website, saying that the CCC’s leadership “wish[es] to commend” Dean for his outreach to those who embrace the Confederate flag.
In fact, the racist group announced it would like to get to know Dean better.
“We would like to invite you, Gov. Dean, to attend the National Board of Directors meeting we are holding in Nashville, Tennessee next week and to address our group briefly along the lines you mentioned in Boston,” said Thomas Dover, president of the CCC. “We would like to make you better acquainted with us and our concerns and activities and to make ourselves better acquainted with you.”
It appears that Dean has ignored the invitation. Smart move.