Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ kerry spot home | archives | email ]

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift jumps on the "Howard Dean for DNC Chair" bandwagon.

The struggle to be Democratic National Committee chair is round one of the battle for the soul of the party. The obvious choice is Howard Dean, who has the clarity of conviction and the passion that voters hunger for even if they don’t always agree with him...

A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches “to position himself as a centrist.” A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he “wouldn’t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left.” Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security’s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont’s governor.

Dean is essentially a New Democrat who happened to be against the war. Signing legislation legalizing civil unions is the only outsized liberal thing he did, and he did it reluctantly in a compromise forced by court action. Only a few staffers were present at the signing ceremony, and photographers were banned. In the heyday of his campaign, when Internet contributions were rolling in and he was the front runner, he talked about broadening the party’s base and talking to voters with Confederate decals on their pickup trucks. He should have said gun racks because his message got lost in a debate over whether a politician invoking Confederate symbols is making a racist appeal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. However moderate Dean may have been in his policy positions as governor, he is not moderate in his rhetoric or his temperament. (YEAAAARRRGH!) One of the key roles of the DNC Chair is to be a public face of the party, making frequent television appearances, often opposite the RNC chair -almost certain to be Ken Mehlman.

Mehlman isn't quite as smooth on television as Ed Gillespie, but he comes across as cool and professional - and would make a stark contrast to the anger and amped-up rhetoric of Howard Dean.

UPDATE: How much would Rush Limbaugh and the other talk radio hosts, the right-of-center bloggers, the left-of-center bloggers, and the pundits love Howard Dean shooting his mouth off every two weeks as DNC Chair? Endless material! And then there's Saturday Night Live, Jay Leno, the Daily Show...

Howard Dean for DNC Chair: Something to shout about!

[Posted 11/30 11:21 AM]