Former top election strategist breaks up with Bush: report

[ProSense]

Former top election strategist breaks up with Bush: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A man who played a key role in securing George W. Bush's reelection has become the first member of the president's inner circle to publicly break up with him insisting that Bush's 2004 rival, Democratic Senator John Kerry, was right onIraq, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday.

The newspaper said Matthew Dowd, who was the presidentÂ’s chief campaign strategist in 2004, now says his faith in Bush was misplaced and that Kerry was correct in calling for a withdrawal from Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview in Austin, Texas, Dowd criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq, the report said.

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Dowd, who in 2004 helped cast Senator Kerry as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security, said he had even written but never submitted an op-ed article titled "Kerry Was Right," the report said.

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[ProSense]

1. No absolution for Dowd.

From Digby:

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That is a huge part of why the "compassionate conservative" turned into a total wingnut. Dowd is very modest these days about his part in that. In fact, he didn't mention it at all in the NY Times article and the reporter didn't bother to mention it either. But let's just say that I'm a little bit skeptical about Matthew Dowd's sincerity about anything. He went from being a Democrat in 1999 to jump on the Bush train, advised him that he pretty much didn't need to bother trying to answer to anybody but his rabid wingnut base and now that it's all fallen apart he's boo-hooing to the NY Times about he feels betrayed.

He claims to be a believer so maybe he can have a conversation with his priest or pastor about where he might have gone wrong in all this. I don't think the rest of us can give him absolution.

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[ProSense]

2. “It’s almost like you fall in love.”

Dowd in the NYT:

“It’s almost like you fall in love,” he said. “I was frustrated about Washington, the inability for people to get stuff done and bridge divides. And this guy’s personality — he cared about education and taking a different stand on immigration.”

Here's a good take on loyalty to Bush, or imbecile ahead of country:

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And, you have to admit, there’s a profoundly displeasing symmetry about Specter, the guy who helped bring all this about, participating in the very same Senate Committee that even now is struggling to determine how deeply illegal the purges were and how deeply in the White House the rabbit hole goes. A bad cop assigned to a case investigating his own crime.

So let’s all wait for the day when Specter and other loyal senators replace the Secret Service as they jog next to the presidential limo in their degradation.

I believe Cicero had the last word on the subject of governmental treason and this applies as equally to Arlen Specter as it does to the Plame outing:

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."

link

[Olney Blue]

3. You're several hundred thousand deaths too late, Dowd. Go away.

[Fridays Child]

4. Until you start naming names and giving details, Matt, your little mea culpa will ring very hollow.

I'll forgive you when you bust Bush's Ohio electoral fraud scheme wide open.

(Cue the crickets.)

:eyes:

[blm]

7. I just brought that subject up in a thread - maybe he sees the Waxman investigations

heading in that direction and he's getting ahead of the big REVEAL.

[ProSense]

5. White House Claims Dowd Is Too Emotional, Turned On Bush Because Of ‘Personal Turmoil’

From Think Progress: Watch it (scroll down).

[EVDebs]

6. Is Matthew Dowd a relative of Monica Goodling's attny John Dowd ?

Nepotism rules the GOP and I wouldn't put out if it weren't a possibility. BTW, is he preparing the media for preferential treatment since, as a Bush political stratigist he'd have been working directly with Rove and Ralston...?

[Justice]

8. faith misplaced? Or just plain wrong? Dowd said he had doubts in 2004, yet

had no trouble doing what he did.

No absolution indeed.

[ProSense]

9. Take another look at Dowd's

hero.