“Dean Aims to Copy GOP Tactics”
Appearing on AB(DN)C’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Howard Dean laid out the Democrat’s strategy to recapture Congress. Simply put, it’s a plan doomed to failure.
Here are some of Dr. Dean’s funniest soundbites:
“If we want to win elections, we have got to stop being ‘Republican-lite.’ We’ve got to stand up for what we believe in,” Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman, said yesterday. “And if you don’t think it works, don’t believe me, believe Newt Gingrich,” he said, referring to the former House speaker, the Georgia Republican who is credited with authoring the “Contract with America,” which gave his party control of Congress in 1994.
When Dr. Dean says, “If we want to win elections, we have got to stop being ‘Republican-lite.’ We’ve got to stand up for what we believe in,” what he’s saying is that the lunatic fringe that’s now the Democratic base won’t turnout for candidates that are mainstream politicians. They want rabid, unyielding bombthrowers. PERIOD. If they don’t get their wishes, then the fundraising dries up.
As for his political assessment of what Newt did, he’s clueless: “How did [Mr. Gingrich] do it? He set a separate agenda for the Democrats, he used corruption at the top of the list, and he was able to pick up 50 seats.”
That isn’t what he did. What Gingrich did long before the Contract With America was that he debated these issues for almost a decade with great conservative minds like Jack Kemp and Vin Webber to establish an appealing agenda. When the Contract With America was unveiled, the GOP was united in what they saw as the Democrats’ bankruptcy of ideas. Corruption played a role in it but not a central role.
With the Contract With America, Republicans could run on a totally optimistic agenda. They didn’t need to run attack ads on Democrats because, frankly, Democrats weren’t part of the conversation. The American people knew that the Democratic Party was intellectually bankrupt. They were tired of the Democrats’ lock on power on Capitol Hill.
Thus far, that’s the exact opposite of what we find today. Democrats aren’t united on anything other than they hate George Bush. After that, they’re back to the Will Rogers’ quote that he didn’t “belong to an organized party” and that he “was a Democrat.”
“You can’t run away from moral values. The truth is the Democrats are the party of moral values. We’re altruists: We actually believe that we’re all in this together. We have a community that we have to sustain,” Mr. Dean said. Americans believe it is a “moral value that everybody has health insurance” and that it’s “immoral for the federal government to tell families what to do in their personal decisions that have to do with their personal lives,” he said.
When he says that “You can’t run away from moral values…”, he’s acknowledging the fact that people are sick of slippery politicians like Chuck Schumer, Sen. Boxer, the Clintons and Teddy Kennedy. They know that these are sleazy politicians who don’t have their best intentions in mind.
When Dr. Dean says “Americans believe it is a ‘moral value that everybody has health insurance”, he’s doing his best to inject policy into moral matters. Everyone having healthcare is to moral values what Fed Reserve rate hikes are to environmental policy. That quote is a great picture of the Democratic Party’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
Finally, there’s this whopper: Democrats are not pro-abortion or pro-same-sex marriage, he said. “I don’t know anybody who is pro-abortion, but we do happen to be a party that believes in individual freedom for Americans to make up their own mind on personal matters,” Mr. Dean said.
Dr. Dean, the day you advocate parental notification and the banning of late term abortions, starting with partial birth abortions, except to save the mother’s life, we’ll just take it as proof that you’re lying. As for not really being “pro-same-sex marriage”, tell that to Gavin Newsom and the mayor of New Pulse, NY. Tell that to the pro-gay marriage activists that are a huge part of the Democratic base. To tell us different is to insult our intelligence and we won’t tolerate it.
Here’s my advice to Dr. Dean: Get an agenda that people can believe in. Stop insulting us with your propaganda. Finally, keep your mouth shut if you aren’t interested in telling people the truth. Until then, stay off the shows.
Cross-posted at BoxerWatch
October 25th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
I knew the DNC was self-destructing when they put this guy in charge…
I read and listen to a lot of things that people in the GOP have to say and I rarely hear the terms ‘moral’ or ‘values’ comes up. The media has used the phrase “party of values” as a way to explain how come most of middle America put conservatives in power. Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Democrats’ socialist agenda runs counter to the philosophy of personal responsibility. Nah, it’s the whole religious Christianity thing. That’s why you’ve got Sen. Hilary Clinton talking about God all of a sudden, like people paying attention to what she’s all about will suddenly say, “Oh! Well, now that she’s put it that way…” Yeah right.