Posted on 07/23/2006 6:50:04 PM PDT by new yorker 77
Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential hopes were sunk when he buckled under to “authoritarian” conservatives hellbent on smearing his military record as part of a larger “proto-facist” movement, says a former top White House aide whose testimony helped sink Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
John Dean, a Republican who served as Nixon’s top counsel, said Kerry slipped up during the 2004 campaign against President Bush by not suing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth when they published a book calling into question the Bay State senator’s Vietnam service.
“What most surprised me is that Kerry never did anything with the Swift boat attacks,” Dean said. “He waited so long, it was shocking. I thought he should have brought a defamation action against them and he would have succeeded.”
Dean compared the situation to a suit brought by the late Sen. Barry Goldwater following his failed 1964 run for president. Goldwater won a lawsuit against a magazine that published a poll of psychiatrists who said he was “crazy.”
Dean was in Boston this week promoting his new book, “Conservatives Without Conscience,” a harsh indictment of the current GOP power structure that paints Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top party leaders as dangerous “authoritarians” who have ignored the ideology’s founding tenets.
“About 23 percent of the American people are authoritarian conservatives,” Dean said. “It’s proto-fascist behavior. While we’re not a fascist nation, we’re too close (for) comfort. I’m trying to warn people.”
Dean, who fired his first salvo at the Bush White House with his last book, “Worse Than Watergate,” slams the administration on the war in Iraq, accuses officials of fear-mongering and criticizes Cheney’s opposition to a congressional measure to ban torture.
Asked what he thinks the president would have to say about his book, Dean said: “He doesn’t read books. He has trouble reading his one-sheet summary papers.”
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em, Down Hezbullies.)
WHAAAT?
Mr. Joh Dean
Why don't you demand that John Kerry give you an answer why he didn't sue the Swift Boat Vets?
Dean's the tiresome Joe Wilson with 30 years' head start.
John Dean should read the Swift Boat vet's stuff and see that sKerry had no basis for a lawsuit. They told the TRUTH!!!
Add me to the list especially if John Dean doesn't like it.
I wouldn't read his book, either. I prefer good ones.
Howard Dean just never stops, oh, well you know what I mean.
All the A-hole had to do was sign a 180 and be done with it, oh I forgot he did but only his chosen one can see it. Personally I don't think the lying B&*$%d ever did sign one.
Another snake crawled out from the rock he was under! There are far too many x-pols writing books and saying idiotic things.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em, Down Hezbullies.)
Is protofascist the new neocon?
John Dean, please go hang out on Keith Olbermanns pathetic show some more. You two are perfect together.
Dean... kinda like Murtha... anything he might've done right in the past doesn't grant them the ability to speak infallibly on current issues.
You mean the books that hardly anyone buys?
Now we know that Dean dropped the soap more than once.
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