How desperate are the Democrats to prevent Howard Dean from becoming chair of the Democratic National Committee? Desperate enough to validate practically every argument made by Republicans and conservative commentators during the early primary season in 2003-4, according to Howard Fineman in Newsweek today:

Last week the search for a surefire Dean-stopper (if there is one) reached new levels, NEWSWEEK has learned, with several governors—among them Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Bill Richardson of New Mexico—trying to gin up a last-ditch plan: let Dean be chairman, but confine his role to pure nuts-and-bolts duties by layering him with a new "general chairman" spokesman for the party. They abandoned the idea after realizing that they didn't have the votes to change the rules—and because the person they wanted to take the new role, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, told them she had no interest.

That left the anti-Dean forces with only one clear strategy: recycling the long list of his provocative statements. Among them: that we shouldn't judge Osama bin Laden until he has a jury trial; that America won't always have the strongest military; that "if Bill Clinton could be the first black president, I can be the first gay president." The ABD forces were also pointing reporters to an off-the-record Harvard seminar in November, at which Dean is rumored to have facetiously suggested that Democrats leave Wyoming rather than put up with anti-gay attitudes there.

Does anyone find it interesting that the man who appeared to have the support of the majority of Demomcrats until his Iowa meltdown now causes such "fear and loathing" among the party's leaders? Had he won Iowa, they would have gladly lined up behind Dean to elect him as leader of the free world. Now he's not even good enough to lead the primary strategy committee for their party, and they're so afraid of him that they want to keep changing the rules to keep his hands off the wheel without adult supervision.

(Memo to Dean: Changing rules mid-election is a time-honored Democratic election fraud tradition. Get used to it.)

If Dean is this dangerous, why did Democrats like Tom Harkin and Al Gore endorse him? If Dean represents such a destructive force, why did he raise $40 million and get the notorious Hollywood activists behind him? Barbra Streisand, Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg and others apparently either have gotten too radical for the Democrats -- we wish -- or the Dems had no problem foisting Dean on America while wanting him excluded from their exclusive tete-a-tetes.

I guess we'll never go broke betting on Democratic hypocrisy. In the meantime, I'll suggest that the DNC read through my DeanWatch category for ammunition against the Vermont Strangler.

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» Dems trying to derail Dean from The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy
I found this on Captains Quarter's. A battle going on in the Democratic party between the off the deep end but don't know it Deaniacs and those in the party that do know it. LOL I am rooting for the... [Read More]

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Of course, Governor Bill Richardson is at the center of it all, and that makes perfect sense considering the important role the elected Chairman could play in Richardson's 2008 presidential run. [Read More]

Tracked on January 25, 2005 9:06 PM

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