From today's issue of The Hotline:
MINNESOTA: Coming Straight From The Top
In his 1/27 news conference, Pres. Bush "dismissed" Sen. Mark Dayton's (D) claim that his admin has lied "repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally" about Iraq, saying "there are 99 senators other than that person." In the Senate debate over Sec/State Condoleezza Rice's nomination, Dayton said Rice and other admin officials had a record of "lying to Congress, lying to our committees and lying to the American people." GOPers "were quick to criticize" Dayton for his "wild-eyed rants."
Dayton spokesperson Chris Lisi said calls and e-mails to Dayton's office "overwhelmingly" supported him, but that they also received "a handful of phone calls" saying he was racist (Webb, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1/27).
Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Grow writes that Dayton was speaking about Rice "from his soul," but his words "didn't just fall on deaf ears. They fell on virtually no ears at all." Just 4 other Sens. were on the floor when he spoke 1/25. Dayton: "We have a lot of good speakers here. We don't have many listeners." The one-sided vote to confirm Rice "could be seen as underscoring the commonly held view" that Dayton "is a vulnerable target" for the GOP, but it is "just as possible to see him as a national leader of opposition" to the Bush admin.
Dayton "doesn't create tingles of excitement," and "it's more powerful to read a Dayton speech than to hear one." But he "has potential leadership strengths," the "greatest" being that he is "one of the few consistent critics" of Bush's foreign policy and "its veracity problems." His criticism "is from the heart," and he "genuinely believes" that he was lied to, noting an '02 meeting with Rice in which he was "repeatedly" told that there was "absolute proof" that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
Most people "acknowledge that Dayton has substance and that he never has been afraid to take political risks," but substance "is a hard sell." Gustavus Adolphus College prof. Chris Gilbert: "Everything he does is going to be trapped in a reelection narrative. We're in a period when loyal dissent gets dragged down as partisan politics" (1/27).
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