Dean blames party's "skullduggery" for withdrawal of popular Ohio Senate candidate

Here's Rush's comments.....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: "Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders." The elites in the Democratic Party are pushing him out. You know, he was the pride and joy of the wacko left. (doing impression) "We've got a war hero running, got somebody that looks good in a uniform," forgetting that it didn't help John F. Kerry. The wackos love the guy, but I will never forget Hackett's campaign. You know, he would raise money nationally trying to sound just like the kook Democrats that are out there, but when he campaigns in this largely Republican district, he tried to sound just like George W. Bush's best buddy. His ads locally differed mightily from his ads nationally. The media and the Democrats are all excited, remember, this was going to be the test case.

This was going to show that the country was fed up with Bush. This is going to illustrate it. This is going to be what they were all waiting for, this is the harbinger. And when he lost -- how many points did he lose by? What was -- no, check it out. They called it a win anyway because it was so close, and so we had a lot of fun as the Democrats sought to redefine victory. You win when you lose, and we urged them to practice that as often as possible. Go out and lose, make it as close as you can, make sure you lose and then claim victory. Makes all kinds of sense. Here's who did Hackett in.

"Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent. Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race."

Once again, he did not gain local prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war because he didn't engage in it locally. He was two different guys. "But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress. 'This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me,' said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race. 'For me, this is a second betrayal,' Mr. Hackett said. 'First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me.'"

This is fabulous! They have thrown their own hero under the bus, folks. This is sort of like when Kofi Annan threw his son Kojo under the bus. A second betrayal. Party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving. He was flogged by his own party out there. "'Alienating Hackett is not just a bad idea for the party, but it also sends a chill through the rest of the 56 or so veterans that we've worked to run for Congress,' said Mike Lyon, executive director for the Band of Brothers, a group dedicated to electing Democratic veterans to national office. 'Now is a time for Democrats to be courting, not blocking, veterans who want to run.'"

Somebody explain to me what the Democrats are thinking here. Why do they think running a military candidate is going to be credible anyway given the posture that they have had the last four or five years. It was a four-point loss, that's right, 52-48, Jean Schmidt beat Hackett, and they claimed it was a win. They were out there, "Oh, yeah, big win, oh, he got so close. This means it's over for Bush. This means that the '06 elections, that Bush is history," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. With the attitudes that they have expressed about the military, they have regularly done their best to impugn the US military. They've cooperated with the members of the media in their party to run stories about how military members are a bunch of hayseed hicks who join the military because there's no economic opportunity in America because the country sucks. They say they support the troops, but they don't, and yet they want to bring out a bunch of guys in uniform to run. Maybe somebody in the party has figured this out. "Democratic leaders say Representative Brown, a seven-term incumbent from Avon, has a far better chance of toppling Senator DeWine," than does Hackett. I thought Hackett won, came so close. This is really just typical of this party. The same thing they did to Andrew Cuomo, and the same thing they did to Carl McCall. Carl McCall was running for governor of New York, black guy, went out there, promised him all kinds of money, they never gave him the money, we ended up raising money for Carl McCall on this program just to make sure that he had some money to mount some sort of a campaign. We didn't want it to be a shellacking, and then Bill Clinton goes to Andrew Cuomo and said, "You know, does the name Torricelli mean anything to you? For the good of the party, Andrew, you're history." And Cuomo was just labor secretary for a time, hasn't been heard from since. I mean, these people are just vicious.

"'It boils down to who we think can pull the most votes in November against DeWine,' said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. 'And in Ohio, Brown's name is golden. It's just that simple.' Mr. Fern added that Mr. Brown's fund-raising abilities made him the better Senate candidate. By the end of last year, Mr. Brown had already amassed $2.37 million, 10 times what Mr. Hackett had raised. Senator Reid did not reply to repeated requests for comment. Asked about Mr. Hackett's contention that he had been pressed to leave the Senate race, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Phil Singer, said, 'We've told both Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett that avoiding a primary will make it easier to win the Ohio Senate seat,' but he added, 'Obviously, the decision to run is Mr. Hackett's and Mr. Hackett's alone.'

"Mr. Hackett said he was unwilling to run for the Congressional seat because he had given his word to three Democratic candidates that he would not enter that race. 'The party keeps saying for me not to worry about those promises because in politics they are broken all the time,' said Mr. Hackett, who plans to return to his practice as a lawyer in the Cincinnati area. 'I don't work that way. My word is my bond.' 'Hackett is seen by many as a straight talker, and he became an icon to the liberal bloggers because he says exactly what they have wished they would hear from a politician.'" So it's what you done for me lately and what can you do for me tomorrow, and, sorry, you just can't cut it. We don't think you can win. Loyalty, consistency, intelligence, here is a guy less than, what, six months ago, they were hoisting him up as their new savior, and now they've thrown him overboard, just thrown him overboard. It's quicker than Kofi threw Kojo overboard in the oil-for-food scandal.

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The latest on Hackett ...

Hackett cites vow in declining to run

BY HOWARD WILKINSON | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER

It was pressure from Democratic Party leaders that pushed him out of the U.S. Senate race, Paul Hackett said Tuesday, but it was his conscience that prevented him from running again in the 2nd Congressional District.

"I made a promise to people who are running in that district right now that I wouldn't do it," Hackett said in an interview with The Enquirer on Tuesday. "And I could not go back on that."

Hackett, a 44-year-old Indian Hill lawyer and Marine Corps veteran of Iraq, not only dropped out of the U.S. Senate primary battle with U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Lorain, but stunned Democratic Party leaders here and in Washington with the announcement that he would not run for the 2nd District seat he lost last summer to Rep. Jean Schmidt.

"The pressure was incredible," said Hackett. "But I gave my word."

Hackett said that over the past two months he told three of the Democrats running for the 2nd District seat - Victoria Wulsin, Thor Jacobs and Jim Parker - that he would not jump from the Senate race into the 2nd District campaign, no matter what kind of pressure he got from party leaders.

Tuesday, he said he had a message for supporters who believe he is the only Democrat who could beat Schmidt this fall: "Just get over it, move on."

"Who am I to tell those people they need to get out of my way so I can run?" said Hackett of the Democrats already in the 2nd District race. "I'm willing to let these people show their stuff. I'm not going to rain on their parade. I'm just one guy. Who the hell was I 12 months ago? Nobody heard of me then, either."

He was, in fact, a political nobody last March when he came home from a seven-month tour of duty in Iraq and decided he wanted to take a shot at the vacant 2nd District seat.

A personal-injury lawyer whose only political experience was a short stint on Milford City Council, he emerged from a five-candidate Democratic primary last June and ended up a national political sensation - a Marine veteran of Iraq who believed the war was a mistake, with big money flowing into his campaign from all over the country.

In the end, he lost the seat with 48 percent of the vote. But he lost in a district where President Bush had won 65 percent of the vote in 2004; Democratic Party leaders in Washington thought they had a marketable commodity in Hackett.

It was almost immediately after the August special congressional election, Hackett said, that he began getting phone calls from New York Sen. Charles Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid urging him to get into the Senate race.

"It was impressive, awesome," Hackett said. "These guys even had their wives call my wife, Suzi. They wanted me bad. It was like waving crack in front of an addict."

After first saying he would not run, Brown entered the race. Hackett said he believes Reid continued to support his candidacy, but said Schumer backed Brown.

He accused the New York senator and other Democratic elected officials of calling potential campaign donors and asking them not to give to the Hackett campaign.

"I know there were calls to potential donors; people told me," Hackett said. "But that's OK. This is a big boy's game. I'm not crying in my soup over it."

With Brown holding a massive edge over him in fundraising, Hackett said he concluded it was not worth the effort.

"I'm a team player; I'm a good-humored guy; I can take it," Hackett said. "But why should I bang my head against the wall, sacrifice my staff, put myself and my family through all of this? I couldn't change the reality."

For the moment, at least, Hackett has no plans to re-enter politics and will focus instead on his private law practice.

But, he said, he is proud of what he has accomplished over the past 11 months.

"I've had people like (former Nebraska senator and Vietnam veteran) Bob Kerrey tell me that they believe I changed the course of the debate over Iraq," Hackett said. "I got thousands of people involved in politics who probably never would have been. I inspired 56 other veterans around the country to run for office. Give me credit - I've accomplished something."

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