Posted on 11/04/2003 4:37:30 PM PST by Indy Pendance
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party criticized Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean for saying he wants "to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."
The comment riled former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, who said Tuesday it indicates Dean's lack of understanding of the South. He also sent a letter to Dean on Monday, asking him to stop using the flag "as a measure of discerning independent voters in the South."
"As you spend more time in South Carolina, I am sure you are going to realize that the average independent South Carolinian is much more cosmopolitan than ... you seem to be willing to give them credit for being," Harpootlian wrote. "The stereotype of an independent Southerner as a rebel flag-waving pickup truck driver is wrong."
Dean sent a letter to Harpootlian on Tuesday, saying he did not intend to stereotype Southerners and believes the Confederate flag is a "despicable symbol of racism, oppression."
"I do not believe that one can assign blanket stereotypes to Southerners or any other group in our country," Dean wrote. "I want people with Confederate flags on their trucks to put down those flags and vote Democratic, because the need for quality health care, jobs and good education knows no racial boundaries."
The Confederate flag is a sensitive issue in South Carolina. The flag was removed from the capitol dome in 2000 and moved it to its current location at a monument on the statehouse grounds. Nevertheless, the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began a statewide economic boycott in 2000 that they plan to continue until the flag is removed.
South Carolina is one of the key early voting states in the Democratic presidential race, with a primary Feb. 3.
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Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War experience will be the subject of a book by historian Douglas Brinkley, drawn from the letters and notes that Kerry kept while serving in the Navy.
The book, titled "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War," will be published by William Morrow on Jan. 6 - just before the start of the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses in which Kerry is a candidate.
Excerpts of the book in the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly - available to subscribers Monday - show Kerry disillusioned with U.S. involvement in the war as he is surrounded by death.
"It was when one of your men got hit or you got hit yourself that you felt most absurd - that was when everything had to have a meaning in order for it all to be worthwhile and inevitably Vietnam just didn't have any meaning," Kerry wrote in his war notes.
Kerry served as the commander of a Swift boat patrolling the Mekong Delta, and after leaving the Navy joined the anti-war movement. The magazine excerpts portray the violence he witnessed - watching a South Vietnamese soldier's bloody death on an operating table, ordering warning shots that ended up killing a small child, picking up the remains of a dead mercenary.
Brinkley, who directs an oral military history project at the University of New Orleans, said Kerry's notes were uniquely literary and well-written - perhaps not surprising for a young man who excelled at prep school and Yale University.
"John's is classic stuff because he was asking philosophical questions and not just writing about the day-to-day," Brinkley said. "You could see on one hand he was brave and patriotic, and on the other the grave doubts he had about the war."
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Even though no votes have been cast, Democrat Howard Dean said Tuesday that Sen. Bob Graham of Florida would be on his short list for vice president.
"The truth is that I told Bob Graham the day he made his decision to drop out that he was on the short list and he is on the short list," Dean said while campaigning in Florida. "He's one of the finest public servants in this country."
Graham, who bowed out of the Democratic presidential race a month ago, said Monday he would not seek re-election to a fourth Senate term. Graham has not ruled out accepting a spot on the Democratic ticket.
The former Vermont governor told reporters that Graham's "certainly going to be very likely to have a position in the Dean administration if Graham wants one."
Dean said he was appalled by the decision by the president's brother and the Florida legislature to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who has been at the center of a legal battle between her parents and her husband.
On orders from Bush and lawmakers, a hospital last month began rehydrating Schiavo six days after her feeding tube was removed.
"What business is it of the government to interfere with a private family matter with a right-to-die case?" asked Dean, a physician. "I am tired of people in the legislature thinking that they have an M.D."
We need to do everything we can to ensure that John Dufus gets the DimWit Party nomination, then come election night we can watch with glee as every state goes to GW.
You may be a dumba$$ if...
And who was the SC governor who put that flag up on the state courthouse? It was a DEM (Ido not remember his name. Hannity has mentioned this hypocracy several times.
They get the same tax deductions if their vehicles are over 6,000 pounds weight. Of course, they need be new and expensive vehicles too, and the owners should be in a higher tax bracket.
Let the JERK hang himself.
I once heard Douglas Brinkley speak; he was disgustingly sycophantic about Democrat politicians (he was going on mainly about Carter).
Maybe Mr. Harpootlian can tell us again about somebody being "light in the loafers," then claim that it wasn't a smear.
Funny; that's the same thing I think about Dean.
ROTFL! Oh, and the cartoon in #14 is hilarious.
Dean or Sharpton, Dean or Sharpton--who to choose?
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