Carter On Dean: I Didn't Call Him, He Called Me

[lucky wilbury]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashjc.htm

CARTER ON DEAN: I DIDN'T CALL HIM, HE CALLED ME
Sun Jan 18 2004 19:43:22 ET

Even though he hosted Dem hopeful Howard Dean in Plains, Georgia on Sunday, former President Jimmy Carter annoyed Dean's senior advisers when he claimed that Dean was not invited!

"He called me on the phone and said he'd like to worship with me," Carter explained. "I did not invite him, but I'm glad he came."

Carter said he has also visited with retired Gen. Wesley Clark, and hopes he will again.

The embarrassing Dean moment came after Dean was pressed in recent interviews on why he would leave Iowa at a crunch time.

Dean said he could not turn down an invitation to appear with a former president he admires, the WASHINGTON POST reports on Monday. But when a visitor to the Marantha church thanked Carter for inviting Dean, Carter quickly interjected, "I did not invite him!"

[ELVIS]

Dean is a fucking hypocrite liar...

[BigBadBrian]

I saw this last and was going to post it. The thread title would have been:


"How Dean whores around for endorsements and gets busted by Jimmy."

:D

[BigBadBrian]

Now it turns out Howie is just a downright liar! It figures.

Invitation? What Invitation?
Howard Dean says Jimmy Carter asked him to church in Georgia. Carter doesn't think so
By KAREN TUMULTY



Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004
Back in the distant past of, say, five days ago, when it looked like Howard Dean was the man to beat in Iowa, it seemed as though he had pulled off yet another master stroke in snagging an invitation to appear in public with Jimmy Carter on the eve of the caucuses. Carter, after all, was the man who had put Iowa on the political map in 1976, when a surprise victory there launched him to the White House. While the former President wouldn’t endorse Dean explicitly — such a move would be unseemly in the midst of a hard-fought primary — campaign aides put out the word that he would do everything but. The trip to Plains, Georgia, would take Dean out of Iowa for 22 precious hours on the weekend before the caucuses, but the campaign deemed it well worth it. Not only would it boost them in Iowa, it was an investment down the road: The South Carolina primary is only two weeks after Iowa, and an appearance with Carter — at a church, no less — would be an important signal that Dean could have some appeal in the Bible Belt.

The decision to go to Plains wasn’t even a close call, Dean later suggested. “When the former President of the United States asks you to go to church with him on a Sunday before the caucuses, I think you probably take that up.” But that was before a series of polls started showing he was in a much tougher fight in Iowa than previously thought. He now might wish he had spent that time talking to Iowans. The latest Des Moines Register poll has him running third in a four-way race, although all four — Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards — are so closely bunched that the polling margin is statistically insignificant.

The summons from Plains? Carter doesn’t remember it quite that way. “I didn’t invite him, but I’m glad he came,” the former President told reporters shortly before he conducted one of his frequent Sunday School classes at Maranatha Baptist Church. “He called me on the phone and said he’d like to come worship with me. … He called and asked me if it would be all right.” As for the timing, Carter’s son Chip later told reporters that the former President had also offered Dean dates in February and March. It was Dean — not Carter — who picked the day before the caucuses. Dean may not even be the only Democratic candidate who gets to boast a church date with the former President. Carter said retired General Wesley Clark has also asked for an opportunity to visit him in Plains and worship with him, and that he expects to be able to arrange one.

Though the event’s main value was as a media spectacle, reporters were kept out of the church, except for a brief photo opportunity, and could hear most of the service only from an overflow room. (As a result, none of them actually got to hear Carter’s brief introduction of Dean in the church; the former President was not wearing a microphone at the time.) And the subsequent public appearance by the two on the Main Street of Plains — all eight minutes and 25 seconds of it — fell well short of even a hint at an endorsement by Carter. He praised Dean for his outspokenness against the Iraq War, which Carter also opposed, and the two of them noted that Dean had gotten his start in politics by working in Carter’s 1980 campaign in Vermont. What neither one noted, however, was that this was the race that Carter lost.

[John Ashcroft]

I think the worst part of this episode is the fact that Dean got dissed from the biggest failure of a President of the 20th century! That's gotta hurt.

[FORD]

Obviously the right wingers are making much more of this than it really is. Chip Carter works for the Dean campaign, and he set it up. End of story. Or lack of story, more accurately.

[Catfish]

Photo opp!!!

[Little Texan]

Why are these Democratic candidates so hard up for an endorsement from Jimmy Carter, anyway? He's only one of the worst excuses for a President this country ever had!