That’s the subject heading of an email sent out by Howard Dean earlier this afternoon–in quotation marks. So Dean is quoting someone, right? Wrong. His email begins:
That’s what Republicans want you to think.
So the “quote” is Dean’s. Here is the basis for it:
This week Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, in an interview with Fox News radio, said in response to Feingold’s action that he has “time and time again [sided] with the terrorists”.
Send a message to Senator Allard: shame on him for questioning the patriotism of another Senator. Sign this petition and it will be delivered to Allard:
It looks as though the Democrats are trying to deflect attention from their own embarrassment over Feingold’s blunder by changing the subject to purported attacks on Feingold’s patriotism. I wonder, though, what Allard actually said. Somehow, it makes me suspicious when Howard Dean quotes a fragment of a sentence, in which he himself supplied the verb. I haven’t been able to track down a transcript of Allard’s interview, or even a longer quote. Does anyone out there know what Allard said?
UPDATE: We called Senator Allard’s office this afternoon, and a staffer read us a statement that included a tribute to Russ Feingold and a paean to the First Amendment. Which makes me think that the Democrats’ quote is pretty close. Not the “traitor” part, of course, but the portion quoted in the body of Dean’s email. You can judge for yourself whether it’s a fair characterization of Feingold’s record on the war.
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