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Duncan
Citizen
Username: Duncanrogers

Post Number: 1483
Registered: 12-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 7:18 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

If the Republicans want the landslide that Strawberry is so confident of then there is one thing the MUST DO NOW. Stop addressing every question regarding Iraq, intelligence lapses, coalition building etc., with the redundant mantra of "Saddam was bad. The world is safer without him. Saddam was bad. Iraq is safer without him" While these may or may not be true they cannot be the answer to every foreign policy question regarding our actions in the middle east. It makes the administration look ridiculous. Condy Rice on the Today Show this morning sounded like a puppet.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"
Wayne Gretzky
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Sylad
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Username: Sylad

Post Number: 179
Registered: 6-2002
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 8:01 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Saddam was bad. The world is safer without him. Saddam was bad. Iraq is safer without him" While these may or may not be true......so you think that he was good?

What good did deeds did he do?

You can argue the point that Saddam is not the the answer for all foreign policy issues, I don't think that the President or his administration is saying that, but how can you you make that statement. So in your mind what would make him bad?
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk

Post Number: 4481
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 8:28 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The GOP is great at getting "talking papers" out to their supporters. I would love to have a dime for everytime I have heard the exact same phrase from four or five Senators and Representatives on one issue or another.

The only problem is that after awhile it seems like The Stepford Wifes Revisited. :-)
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Duncan
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Username: Duncanrogers

Post Number: 1485
Registered: 12-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 8:39 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The "these may or may not be true" did not refer to Saddam's badness. Sorry for not making that clearer. It refered to whether the world was a safer place or indeed whether Iraq was a safer place. I have said it before in more than a dozen posts out here, Sylad, that I am glad he is gone. He was a psycho beyond the pale. But that doesn't dilute my point.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"
Wayne Gretzky
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ashear
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Username: Ashear

Post Number: 931
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:11 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The real problem is that the Republicans, in their effort to avoid having investigations going on during the election season, are setting themselves up for accusations they are hiding something. Having given the bipartisan committee investigating 9/11 a hard time about getting documents they are now opposing extending the committee's term so it can finish the work that was delayed by administration intransigence in the first place. They are also opposing David Kay's call for an independant investigation of our intelligence services. Whatever else one may beleive it is hard to deny that our intel is screwed up. They were wrong on WMD, clueless on Libya, and, of course, blind on 9/11. (On a side note I certainly think there is bipartisan blame for that, going back several admins.)
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United STRAWBERRY of America
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Username: Strawberry

Post Number: 1857
Registered: 10-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:18 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Duncan writes:

"Saddam was bad. The world is safer without him. Saddam was bad. Iraq is safer without him" While these may or may not be true"

Oh, Duncan...This is just silly.
I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
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Nohero
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Username: Nohero

Post Number: 2826
Registered: 10-1999


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:22 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The intelligence may or may not have been faulty. The problem may have been the interpretation given to that intelligence, by Administration officials.

This is what Ken "Gathering Storm" Pollock wrote recently, concerning the Administration's treatment of the intelligence analysts:

quote:

The intelligence community's overestimation of Iraq's WMD capability is only part of the story of why we went to war last year. The other part involves how the Bush Administration handled the intelligence. Throughout the spring and fall of 2002 and well into 2003 I received numerous complaints from friends and colleagues in the intelligence community, and from people in the policy community, about precisely that. According to them, many Administration officials reacted strongly, negatively, and aggressively when presented with information or analysis that contradicted what they already believed about Iraq. Many of these officials believed that Saddam Hussein was the source of virtually all the problems in the Middle East and was an imminent danger to the United States because of his perceived possession of weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorism. Many also believed that CIA analysts tended to be left-leaning cultural relativists who consistently downplayed threats to the United States. They believed that the Agency, not the Administration, was biased, and that they were acting simply to correct that bias.


(Emphasis added) Source: "Spies, Lies and Weapons" by Kenneth M. Pollock.

One would hope that the independent investigation recommended by Dr. Kay, would look into this.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1080
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:32 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Having just fallen flat on their faces with predictions, you'd think the GOP would have the wit to get out of the crystal ball business. The Shia clerics of Iraq are obviously emboldened by the arrest of Saddam. If Iraq turns into a Islamic theocracy by next year, arm and arm with nuclear Iran and nuclear Pakistan, is the world a safer place? If the Kurds opt for civil war to fight the Shias, and the Turks react violently, is the world a safer, better place? If the oil-producing Sunni neighbors of Iraq cannot suppress Shia aspirations in their own countries, what is the US going to do to protect its oil interests in the region? Something tells me the Bush Administration is not suddenly going to advocate electric cars instead of Hummers.

There are no doubt thousands of Shias and Kurds who have less to fear today than they did last year from the broken-down Saddam Hussein, because chances are slim (although not impossible) Saddam himself will return. But no one knows what will happen in Iraq, least of all the clueless crowd that invaded it.


ashear:

You're right that our intel is not serving the country well, but I am increasingly alarmed by what appears to be an effort to make intel the fall guys for the political warmongers who wanted to invade Iraq ("We'll come up with reasons we can sell later"). The Administration knowingly lied to the American people. There was plenty of information all over the place that Iraq had no WMD, including testimony from defectors and reports from UN inspectors pre-dating Hans Blix. In fact, David Kay said in his testimony before Congress exactly what Scott Ritter tirelessly said well before the war, to the great derision of Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly (!), as did British Cabinet member Robin Cook in resigning from the Blair government two weeks before the war began. David Kay was a CIA spy in Iraq, working under the cover of being a weapons inspector. His "cowboy" actions almost singlehandedly wrecked the inspections process, and did a considerable amount to set us on a path toward war. What he said was mildly interesting and I agree an independent inquiry is necessary. In the meantime, there is enough evidence on the record for anyone to see that this Administration cannot be trusted with the national security of this country.

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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1081
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:35 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Nohero,

Absolutely and hooray for you. I also read Pollack's article and fumed when I saw Kay testifying that he never saw evidence that intelligence was politically manipulated. Kay has made a career seeing only what he wants to see, guided by his own interests.

Ditto Ken Pollack in many respects as well, I must say. Given the nature of the debacle into which people like this have led us, I don't know why anybody is taking their word for anything.



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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk

Post Number: 4484
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 9:54 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Basically people see what they want to see. Inteligence is funny stuff in that it is never black and white. How it is interpreted is the key. In an ideal world there would have been one analyst team trying to prove there were no WMD in Iraq as a counterfoil for the majority of analysts who were convinced SH had an active WMD program.

Clinton had the same mindset I think. However, he never invaded Iraq to find out fer sure.

For the record Pakistan is a majority Sunni country.
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tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn

Post Number: 2144
Registered: 12-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:38 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The statement that Saddam is bad and the world is safer without him is undeniably true but is also a bit fluffy. There have been and continue to be lots of people who are bad and without whom the world would be safer.

The important question, and one that Bush never really addresses, is the cost of removing a bad person. In the case of Adolf Hitler, any conceivable cost in 1938 would have been preferable to the actual cost of World War II in Europe.

In the case of Saddam, what is an acceptable cost? What if it turns into a quaqmire killing 1000 of our soldiers each year. What if civil war breaks out?

People like to compare Saddam to Hitler. However, that comparison is useful for cheap political points only since the magnitude of the Nazi threat to the world exceeded even Saddam's wildest fantasies of any power he might amass.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1082
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:55 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

bobk,

Thanks for reminding be about the Sunni majority in Pakistan. Makes it less likely they will hand over Osama, alive or dead, if we allow Shias to run Iraq, and I don't know how we can prevent that. And bravo to Bill Clinton for refusing to kill tens of thousands of people to test a proposition he had plenty of evidentiary reason to doubt was true. And shame on him and Blair for backing Bush's war.

tjohn,

It seems to me that the US and the world was less safe the minute the Bush Administration conceived of going to war unilaterally for reasons it has yet to justify. And it is simply nonsense (not your nonsense, other people's nonsense) to now pretend that Saddam Hussein was not the preferred choice of the US for 4 decades in Iraq -- and I dare say we wish we could find another Sunni Saddam-like strongman to succeed him.

For those who doubt that, here's my Oscar nominee for hands-down best movie of the year (a tribute to the late Bob Hope as well!

http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

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Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey

Post Number: 509
Registered: 8-2003


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 12:26 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

tjohn,
given that we haven't found any weapons in Iraq, how does one square that with the contention that "the world" is now safer with Saddam removed from power. It seems "the world is now safer" is a platitude that people keep mouthing even though there is absolutely no evidence that it's true. Saying the world is undeniably safer is a major overstatement.

I think the only thing that can be said with certainty is that Iraqi dissidents are safer with him out of the picture. Although even that statement won't be true until a stable government replaces the chaos and violence that exists there now.
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Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider

Post Number: 1917
Registered: 1-2003


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 12:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Right, we've replaced a dangerous government with the danger of having no government. So the dissidents are relatively safer and the average citizen's life is worsened in many ways, such as the fact that there's less clean drinking water available.
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
There is nothing

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Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey

Post Number: 510
Registered: 8-2003


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 1:26 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I know that we'd like to believe the world is safer, but considering Saddam did not have the means to menace any other countries, I can't really believe we actually are safer.

violence continues in Israel, North Korea is still menacing, Pakistan and India still have nukes pointed at each other, and of course al Qaeda is still out there.

it's good that Libya has promised not to develop nukes, but the fact remains that they didn't actually posess any.

Howard Dean was ridiculed for saying it, but it's the truth - the capture of Saddam does not leave the U.S. any safer than we were before.
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tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn

Post Number: 2146
Registered: 12-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 1:34 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

It's political suicide to say it the way Dean has. One has to try to shift the focus to the real issues such as whether or not we have our priorities straight. Could the fortune in lives and money already spent in Iraq have been better spent elsewhere?

Bush lives and dies by simpleton statements that are sound good, have little meaning without the fine print and are dangerous to contradict.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1083
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 3:55 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

It's not Bush who lives and dies by his simpleton statements.

I think Howard Dean deserves a great deal of credit for understanding instantly that the capture of Saddam did not leave us in the US or our forces abroad at any less risk of being attacked. He's a man who has repeatedly shown he's not suckered by spin, even initially -- and the spinners are spinning furiously at him out of sheer instinct for self-preservation. I simply can't believe the only way for any successful Presidential candidate to behave is to know the truth but keep lying to the American voters as if they were irredeemably stupid and couldn't understand reality or didn't deserve better anyway. I think that style is finally looking a bit threadbare.

I saw Charlie Rangel on some weekend morning news show I'm sure only his mother was watching along with me, but he was crystal clear about this. It's not complicated. Staging international military stunts like "shock and awe," toppling statues and gloating about capturing the "Ace of Spades" in a "spiderhole" isn't adding anything to our security. Building cooperative relations with other people in the world and leading the way on nuclear proliferation does. (A sane energy policy would help bigtime.)

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tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn

Post Number: 2153
Registered: 12-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 7:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Dean needs to be a bit more politically aware. Capturing Saddam Hussein was a big deal for our soldiers. It was a necssary step forward although his capture is, at best, the end of the beginning. For Dean to immediately point out that Hussein's capture did not improve our domestic security was politically unwise. He should have allowed the Army to enjoy a job well done before getting back to reality.

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Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave

Post Number: 6253
Registered: 4-1998


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 8:05 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Dean spent too much political currency in the Iraq issue. John Edwards, the fastest riser and biggest recipient of the undecided vote in contests so far is talking about very broad economic issues in a positive way.
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sbenois
Citizen
Username: Sbenois

Post Number: 10660
Registered: 10-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:22 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Howard Dean also deserves zero credit for being one of the very few Americans who refuses to convict bin laden without a trial. This opinion is at odds with no less an expert on World Affairs than Madelyn Hoffman who in today's News-Record didn't appear to struggle with our legal system's presumption of innocence when questioned about bin laden.

Howard Dean is a hot-headed lunkbrain who should not be within a thousand feet of of the White House.


---> Brought to you by Sbenois Engineering LLC <-
Hey, it also wouldn’t look good coming out of a motel with your wife’s best friend saying you were just planning a surprise birthday party for her husband...- Arturo November '03
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Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave

Post Number: 6254
Registered: 4-1998


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:26 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"Hot-headed" is more apt for people willing to forego due-process. Last time I checked we're still a nation ruled by laws.
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sbenois
Citizen
Username: Sbenois

Post Number: 10661
Registered: 10-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:30 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

That's nice Dave.


---> Brought to you by Sbenois Engineering LLC <-
Hey, it also wouldn’t look good coming out of a motel with your wife’s best friend saying you were just planning a surprise birthday party for her husband...- Arturo November '03
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Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave

Post Number: 6256
Registered: 4-1998


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I focus-grouped that response and it scored well.

-remember: I was the first to call Dean a looney!
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bets
Citizen
Username: Bets

Post Number: 478
Registered: 6-2001


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 11:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

If I was Washashore, I would post

BILL MAHER FOR POTUS!!

and I would do so because I think he's the most intelligent, informed, unprejudiced, and trustworthy man on TV today.

I do not agree with everything he says, but I do believe he says everything without the guile or self-preservation that is so prevalent in current political satire (not to mention politics).

I know that:

Bush lied, but luckily it was about faulty intelligence that launched a war, not just "that woman."

Government is allowed to invade our bedrooms to determine that love doesn't define marriage, sex does.

Big Business is much more important than Little Taxpayer, and pesky corporate scandals should be dealt with in the boardrooms (or Oval Office) instead of the courtrooms. Going after matrons of societal ettiquette is savvy wag-the-dog technique. Please ignore the Enron execs and Halibuton profiteers lurking behind the black curtain.

Meanwhile, I'm supposedly getting a $300 tax "break," but my health insurance costs went up $1,500 last year. Woo-freaking-hoo!! Yeah, private HMOs and the pharmaceutical company's eye-popping profits are really in my best interest! Thank you, George W. Bush, for forcing me to dip into savings to keep up with my rising utility bills. And I was really happy when the last shred of hope was lost, my Social Security is gone.

Last, but not least, thank you for welcoming the church into my State. Your vow to uphold this Country's impregnable Constitution was to allow me my beliefs and not allow my country to force any faction's practice upon me.

Now for what I learned from Bill. (Maher, that is.):

From his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, that Eskimos are suffering the effects of toxic air that is directly affecting their food and water supply.

From the Larry King Live appearance: That gaming laws have been relaxed to allow hunting of endangered animals.

That the Medical Use of Marijuana laws are still being hopelessly entangled in useless rhetoric while sick people suffer. Bill Maher was right on when he claimed the pharmaceutical lobby is responsible for this travesty; where is our government when we need defense against special interests? Then again, how many nauseous cancer patients are going to vote?

I guess I've been ranting. These are rantable times. Just ridiculous. Where's the Special Prosecutor that this country BEGS?
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Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero

Post Number: 2832
Registered: 10-1999


Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 11:41 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I'll miss you, Bets, when Homeland Security takes you away ...
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Mayhewdrive
Citizen
Username: Mayhewdrive

Post Number: 758
Registered: 5-2001


Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 7:41 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Bets,

Look on the bright side bets, compared to the scary and right wing extremist goverernment we currently have in Washington, it makes our governing situtation in South Orange look almost......naw.....never mind. :-)

P.S. I agree with you that Bill Maher has some very insightful & accurate commentary. I never really watched "Politically Incorrect", but I am hooked on "Real Time"
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1091
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 3:53 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I think John Farmer got it more right than wrong in his colum today about Dean:


Democrats owe a great debt to Dean

Friday, January 30, 2004

The Democratic Party probably won't give its presidential nomination to Howard Dean, but it owes him big time. So will its eventual nominee.

Dean has restored to the Democrat Party something its Washington wing had surrendered without a fight during the Bush years -- relevance. He got the party off its knees and back on its feet. He infused it with energy and a new interest among the public and the media. Who gave a damn about the Democrats before Dean came along? He even gave his party an issue -- the Iraq war -- that too- timid D.C. Democrats had ceded to George W. Bush and the Republicans. Thanks to Dean -- not to any of his rivals -- the Democratic Party now offers a credible opposition voice and a clear alternative to Bush in November.

Consider what the Democrats were before Dean's advent. As the 2002 midterm elections approached, the Democratic leadership in Washington, principally South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle and Rep. Dick Gephardt, but including Dean's rivals, Sens. John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, threw in the towel on the war.

It was a third-rail kind of issue, they reasoned, full of potential for raising the old patriotism argument Republicans have used against Democrats since Vietnam. We'll fight on more familiar ground, the economy, or by carping about elements of the Patriot Act, though not too stridently, they concluded.

It was classic misreading, not only of the country but of the Democratic rank and file and its resentment of Bush. While many of the Democratic regulars sat out the elections in disgust, Bush wrapped the GOP shamelessly in the flag and won a midterm congressional victory that ordinarily would have gone to the opposition Democrats. When the dust cleared in November 2002, the Democratic Party was in the fetal position -- minus a message and minus any real presidential prospects.

Then along came Howard Dean.

Dean alone, or perhaps along with his now-sacked guru, Joe Trippi, sensed the deep disillusionment of grassroots Democrats across the country and, equally important, of independents and politically footloose students and young people. They rallied to him by the thousands -- never mind that few had ever heard of him. They gave money, even those who had little to give, because he was, as he claimed in introducing himself to Washington, the candidate of "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

It was a velvet revolution, but the Washington crowd, Kerry, Edwards et al., was deaf to it. Much of the criticism of Washington as being out of touch is overdone. But not in this instance. Only after Dean had walked off with the early money title and leaped to large leads in all the polls -- and on the strength of an anti-war stance, no less -- did his Washington rivals awaken to their peril and own dwindling presidential prospects.

A month ago, it looked too late for Kerry and the Potomac wing of the party. Dean looked too far ahead to catch. No longer. Odds are that Democrats in the seven Southern, Western and Midwest states that vote Tuesday will conclude the job New Hampshire and Iowa voters began and write finis to the Dean candidacy or at least wound it mortally.

But even a string of Dean losses Tuesday can't rob Democrats of the energy, the enthusiasm, the issues and the interest he has brought to a race most of the press and the public thought would be an issueless walkover for Bush. Some of his best rhetorical lines are now standard for the other Democrats.

"You have the power!" Edwards shouts, a flat-out steal from Dean. And all the major candidates, except Lieberman, feel free to attack Bush on the war, which is now seen as a potentially winning issue for Democrats in November.

It's Dean's legacy to his party and to its eventual nominee, probably Kerry.

In view of how right he was on the issues and on the temper of his party's grassroots faithful, how was Dean undone so quickly? Mostly by his own hand. Sure, his rivals savaged him. He was rash and it made him unready for the responsibilities of the White House, they charged. But it was his shoot-from-the-lip statements and often erratic behavior that made those charges credible. And when internal polls told Dean the criticisms were taking hold, his attempts to rebut them diverted him from his winning message -- the war and the need for change in Washington.

The firing of Trippi seems to signal that the end is near for Dean. His money is running out. And a new, buttoned-down manager in place of Trippi and his Peter Pan politics is hardly likely to right the ship before Tuesday. But Dean -- and especially the Democratic Party -- can take comfort in knowing that Dean has brought his party back to life. You did good, Howard, real good.

John Farmer is The Star-Ledger's national political correspondent.


PS from Harpo: When you put it together with the fact that almost all of the Potomac Wing Democrats also were deaf to people like Gen. Merril McPeak and Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment about the bogus case about "WMD" before the war, Howard Dean's diagnosis of what ails the country is acute. If you think Dean is looney, you probably think Joe Lieberman and John Kerry are in their right minds in voting for the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind and the Iraq War. You may have the "politics" right but the policy and national interest backwards (as they did). And you may be missing the urgency of the mission of removing Bush -- which Howard Dean saw very early on, and still sees more clearly than Kerry. I also believe the President of the United States should back a trial for Osama bin Laden as a matter of principle, if not necessarily practicaility, since there may be little chance that Pervez Musharraf, Bush's "ally" in the war on terrorism, ever stops sheilding him.

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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1092
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 4:16 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

And I just wanted to add:

Great post, bets. I've seen senseless ranting on this board, and your post doesn't fit that description. It seems that whenever anybody expresses some passion for the American values that Bush is trashing, it gets categorized or even self-categorized as a rant. I think the shouting is justified at the present, alarming moment.
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bets
Citizen
Username: Bets

Post Number: 483
Registered: 6-2001


Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 12:24 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

That's a frightening comment and a validation all at once, Nohero. Why aren't more of us worried? What will it take?

MHD, you and I live in a well-to-do village that has been pretty apathetic at the polls. Sad but true. I think change is coming soon, as people who moved here 2-3 years ago are now suffering from "coming-soon-itis." It will only get worse as more deadlines are missed, and hopefully some positive change will occur at the municipal elections in May 2005.

Harpo, I agree that times are extremely alarming. What personal privacy will be left sacred under the current atmosphere of scary alert levels and contempt of free speech?

I know it's just "BORING" for some, but for me -- a woman raised by two extremely intelligent, loving, and strict parents -- it's a matter of pride: My absolute right to independence and freedom according to the (reasonable) laws of the nation.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo

Post Number: 1093
Registered: 6-2001
Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 1:18 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

bets,

This might be BORING too but: I was raised by two Goldwater Republicans! My mother is now an anti-war Democrat; my father died in 1970. Were Goldwater alive, I think he'd be recommending that George Bush get a kick in the pants.
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NCJanow(akaLibraryLady)
Citizen
Username: Librarylady

Post Number: 1189
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 4:35 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Wow Bets, you 11:32 post was phenomenal.
See, when we leave the village, there are things we can agree upon
Bill Maher is so right on. His book, "When You ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden" is a must read as well.
NCJ aka LibraryLady
On a coffee break..or something like it.

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