Covered In Shame

ABC's story on Howard Dean and Dennis Madore is so vile that even the illiberal Mickey Kaus condemns it as a smear. Of course, to Midget Mick, the significance of the story is that shows Lucianne Goldberg is not a hypocrite.

Kaus "writes" (or is that 'writes'?):

Take that bus and shove it! I can't quite believe ABC ran with that Dean "affidavit" story (as Drudge tactfully calls it). There's no evidence presented that Dean knew of the actions of the former employee involved, certainly not before he filed his affidavit. Nor is it even really clear exactly what those actions were. Read it yourself. ABC (Mark Halperin, you too) should be ashamed. The network doesn't just report the story--it hypes the story (in the attempt to make it a story). If I were Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, I'd have tried to kick ABC off the plane too. ... Hypocrisy Watch: And if Democrats had tried this sort of last-minute smear on, say Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can bet Republicans like Lucianne Goldberg would have immediately denounced it. Yet when the late hit is on Howard Dean, Lucianne Goldberg ... well, actually her site immediately denounced it. ("ABC falls for ... lame hit job.") This is one reason I like Lucianne Goldberg.

Two things Kaus conveniently omits:

1. There is a similar, but more substantive, story to be told about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold S. has hired and retained an alleged spouse batterer as one of his top consultants. Don Sipple was a highly-paid political consultant for Arnold during Arnold's 2003 campaign. Sipple was recently named by Arnold to co-lead two of Arnold's newly-formed political committees. Sipple was accused by two of his ex-wives of battering them. These allegations were made under oath, in court, during a custody hearing. (Sipple denies the allegations.) The allegations were well-known when Arnold hired Sipple in 2003: They were the subject widespread media attention in 1997, as well as the subject of a published 1999 California appellate court opinion affirming the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit Sipple filed against the publishers of Mother Jones, which first reported the story.

Kaus admits there's no evidence Dean knew of the allegations against Madore (who of course was a state employee, not a hand-picked and well-paid campaign consultant). Certainly there was no sworn testimony by two witnesses against Madore at the time Dean signed the affidavit. In contrast, Arnold would have to be brain-dead not to know of the allegations against Sipple in 2003. So why does Kaus suggest that a story about Arnold S. hiring an accused batterer would be "a smear"?

2. Kaus uses ellipses to shorten Goldberg's supposedly praiseworthy condemnation of ABC -- by two words. Goldberg didn't write "ABC falls for ... lame hit job." She wrote "ABC falls for Chris Lehane lame hit job." Why does Kaus omit those two words, eleven letters? It's not like Kaus doesn't loathe Lehane. (See here and here.)

As Kaus might say, "there's no evidence presented for" Goldberg's charge of Lehane's involvement. (The ABC story cites Jerry Diamond, "a Dean supporter and former Vermont attorney general who was the lawyer for Madore's wife," as a primary source.)

Goldberg's denunciation is only praiseworthy if the entire sentence is true. Otherwise, it's another last-minute smear and right-wing hit job, albeit one directed at a Dem other than Dean. Kaus should either endorse Goldberg's entire statement or leave the hideous hater and her racist bulletin board out of the discussion altogether.