-
BLITZER: Well, Jim, on the Wesley Clark issue, you know, a four- star supreme allied commander of NATO, how much do you worry about a debate between Wesley Clark and President Bush?
JIM DYKE, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, RNC: Well, the first thing you have to do is win the primary, obviously.
And what we've seen in the last week is sort of a shifting in General Clark's positions. He was for the war. He testified in front of Congress and, in fact, gave very compelling testimony, which this week he suggested we took parts of. So maybe it'd be a good idea if we put the whole transcript of the testimony up. We don't want to misrepresent him.
But I think anybody who reads that would have trouble pulling from that a compelling case against the war.
BLITZER: Has Wesley Clark, Donna, gotten a free ride so far? Have people not scrutinized his words as closely as, shall we say, Howard Dean?
~~~
BLITZER: Let me let Carlos weigh in on the General Clark phenomenon.
CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLIITAL ANALYST: Well, I want to say several things.
One, I think what Jim and the RNC have done is brilliant. I mean, they've...
DYKE: Thank you, Carlos.
WATSON: ... inserted themselves in the Democratic campaign very early. They ran -- or, they didn't run, but the Club for Growth ran an ad here in Iowa which was part of what ultimately stemmed some of Howard Dean's momentum here.
And again, part of the reason why they're weighing in on Wesley Clark and on Howard Dean and on John Kerry is to weaken all of these candidates, because I think the RNC is smart enough to know this is still an evenly divided country, you know, the red states and the blue states. And Jim knows that Wesley Clark would be a formidable competitor. And Karl Rove has said as much.
BLITZER: Go ahead and respond, Jim.
DYKE: I think the reason we weigh in is almost as sort of a fact-check operation. I mean, if Wesley Clark comes out and says he opposed the war from the beginning and there is testimony of him moving in that direction, we think it's worth pointing out. We think it's worth pointing out when candidates take positions that are in direct contrary to fact.
There you are - the SCLM reports lies and praises the liars.
wolf.blitzer@turner.com