THE DEAN DOSSIER (research information on DNC Chair Howard Dean posted here)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1343717/posts
Posted on 02/15/2005 9:51:07 AM PST by NYer

Dean: Avoid Using Term “Pro-Choice” to Attract Potential Conservative Voters

WASHINGTON, February 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The new chairman of the US Democratic Party, Howard Dean, cautioned his party members to avoid using the term “pro-choice” when referring to themselves, in order not to alienate potential conservative voters.

Dean, making the comments Thursday at the Democratic National Committee meeting, said, “I don't think we should use ‘pro-choice’,” because it brands Democrats as too pro-abortion, according to a New York Post report. Republicans ridiculed Dean, saying Democrats wouldn’t fool anyone as long as they keep voting against bills like the partial-birth abortion ban and parental notification for a child’s abortion.

Dean also said he would be spending a “disproportionate” amount of time in Republican “red” states, trying to win support for the Democrats. “I'm going to spend a disproportionate part of my time in red states, because I think that's where we really need attention,” he said.

“That's great. We won't have to worry about firing up the Republican base if he comes to red states,” said Republican pollster John McLaughlin. “They'll be turning out to vote against whoever Dean supports.” Dean was installed as the new Democratic Party chairman Friday.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1343744/posts

Will Dean Scream Awaken the Democratic Party?
GOPUSA | 2-15-05 | Kevin Fobbs

In a scream that was heard around the nation in 2004 the voice behind the scream has re-emerged on top of the heap of the Democratic Party and he and his famous voice will be directing the party into the mid-term elections and Presidential Race of 2008.

Was his election or elevation from political purgatory a well engineered feat that was neatly packaged as a political gift for the GOP? Will Dean’s ability to talk his way into political drama and escalating miscues be the right stuff for the Democratic Party at the expense of Republican operatives around the nation? Personally I don’t think the Democratic Big Blue Scream Machine is going to topple any political mountains anytime soon.

I’m sure you’ve heard what His Highness Sir Screamer has remarked of his “hatred” for us conservative Republicans. Now is that any way for a serious leader of any political party to function? I mean take a look at the former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe. He was certainly as partisan as any head of the Democratic Party has been and then some. Yet, amidst his painfully dulling comments about What the President didn’t do, what our leadership in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate were doing, and then what us conservatives were saying in our effort to reclaim America for its true Judeo-Christian values…he never stated he hated us.

But Dean does... and he does harbor a certain adversion to conservatives which he hopes he can turn into a sure fire party builder to end the ten-year slide of the national Democratic Party. He sincerely believes that all of this negative energy can somehow be channeled to re-capture red states, strengthen blue states and broaden the base of the party, while moving steadily to the left of center.

It sounds like an impossibility. When you consider the centrist leaders like Senator Feinstein, Senator Lieberman, former Senator Zell Miller… Dr. Dean believes his Party should breath the rarified air that Senator Ted Kennedy breathes, and as inviting as that all may seem to some liberals who believe the best way to build a successful pathway to the future is to move toward the far left antics of the past…It is the wrong move for Democrats.

Sure…The Deaniacs have to be full of themselves right about now. I mean who wouldn’t? They saw their former leader’s Presidential hopes riddled to pieces by Vietnam gunboat hero Senator John Kerry. Dean saw his campaign literally evaporate after the Iowa Caucuses and he somehow managed to still keep himself relevant, afloat and viable on his political life raft during the Presidential Sweepstakes instead of slowly disappearing beneath the waves like so many former Democratic Presidential candidates had before.

Perhaps, Dean really had something else in mind. After all, this is the man who galvanized his legendary Internet Troops, and amassed an impressive monetary war chest that certainly rivaled if not surpassed all of the other Democrat contenders combined. Was Dean running for President in the beginning to truly run in truth for the opportunity to remake the Democratic Party in his own image? Was the run for President the ruse... only to go for the true gold in Dean’s mind? Was there a sense of creating a new type of Camelot?

Would he revisit and recapture those halcyon days of yore, when liberal meant liberal and not the version he had to deal with in the 2004 election? Think about it. Dean has a vision for America that is truly liberal and he believes that Senator John Kerry came awful close to capturing the gold, but he just was not liberal enough. John Kerry didn’t have the scream. the emotion. The feeling that Howard Dean has.

I mean really. Can you imagine Senator John Kerry trying to pull off a John Kerry Scream? Why it would be like listening to a polite exchange between to fencing partners; “Excuse me..I think you are really a trifle too loud.” “But good fellow…I’m about to say that we are going to go to California..to New York...to Nebraska..to Colorado….fine skiing there…to Florida…to Michigan…very cold there…to Florida…remind me to get the boat out…well...we are just going to win it all.”

Well you get the drift. In other words, it wouldn’t be the same. I think Dean knew that about his Democratic faithful. I think he really knew that the “Anyone but Bush” approach would not work in the end and he…Dean, the self anointed visionary of liberals would be right there to pick up the tattered pieces.

And my friends he has.

When outgoing DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe handed Dean the gavel, Dean immediately set out to tell his new party faithful that he would out do the Republicans and the conservatives by reaching out to Red-state evangelicals, by courting the Christians and be recapturing the Catholic base, because after all the national Catholic agenda is just like the Democratic agenda…but there is that little sticking point called protecting life.

Well, after all he is Howard Dean and if his scream can’t convert you..his ability to out maneuver the war hero of his party and land on top out and of reach of the Clintons…he might just have one more trick up his sleeve.

We’ll be waiting with ear mufflers on...just in case he wants to go back to that scream thing. _______________________________________________________

Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is also Second Vice Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit as well as co-founder of the Jackson, MI-based American Conservative Values Television Network. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show at www.wdtkam.com. # # # #

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1344172/posts

The Great Con (New paint on a broken-down car can't hide the Democrats' corrosion.)

The American Prowler | 2/16/2005 | George Neumayr

The future of the Democratic Party depends on a sustained con job. But to pull it off, the Democrats need a con man far less obvious than Howard Dean. A transparent demagogue, Dean is like a used car salesman scrambling to sell broken-down cars by slapping new paint on them.

The Democrats aren't taking advice from Zell Miller but from PT Barnum. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, Barnum said, though he might have revised that observation had he seen the big top of the modern Democratic Party, which is running into the problem Abraham Lincoln identified: you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Having experienced liberalism in its distilled form for decades, the American people were able to measure Democratic rhetoric against reality in this last election and judged it clownish. What the Democrats live in fear of -- not that the American people won't grasp the meaning of their rhetoric but that they will -- came to pass. How stupid do you think we are? was America's shrug at the rhetoric of the John Kerry campaign.

Bill Clinton, a veteran con man who knows that words aren't enough to dupe people, had advised Kerry to support state propositions against same-sex marriage. Willing to oppose gay marriage in word but not deed, Kerry was spooked by Clinton's advice and declined it.

Dean will be an even harder pupil for Clinton to train. If Kerry couldn't plausibly oppose gay marriage -- since he hailed from the liberal state that had made it an issue in the first place -- how much more difficult will it be for Dean? As governor of Vermont he signed the first same-sex civil unions bill in the country, and made that a prominent selling point during last year's primary.

Like satire sprung to life, the Democrats lost an election (primarily) on gay marriage, abortion, and de facto pacifism, then proceeded to make their loudest voice a failed candidate who most visibly carries that baggage " an off-putting blowhard who has said "I can be our first gay president," oversaw abortions as an executive board member of Planned Parenthood, and said Osama bin Laden is innocent until proven guilty.

Dean's clumsy paint job of policies that had alienated the country didn't even hold up on his first day as chairman. Betraying dismay and puzzlement, the Washington Post reported that one of the incoming chairman's first acts last Friday was to meet with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus. If Dean is opposed to gay marriage, he must not have informed Gloria Nieto. She told Dean "how she married her female partner in Massachusetts last year, and says she hopes that her community will always be respected within the Democratic party," reported the Post. "To which Dean walks out from behind the podium and envelops the woman in a big hug. He is crying himself. 'That's why I'm a Democrat,' he says."

This must make Clinton wince. He always made sure to reserve his weeping for larger voting blocs. As evident in his hasty firing of Joycelyn Elders and temporizing on gays in the military, Clinton had enough of the South in him to observe a Machiavellian respect for the very middle-class morality he was violating. But Dean can't stop himself from starkly setting himself against bourgeois morality, assuming like many coastal Democrats that the common sense on which it rests will pass away. It won't. It is the fads that defy common sense which pass away -- and these fads form the collapsing platform of the Democratic Party.

This is what makes the con job of the Democrats so tricky. They are in effect asking Americans to suspend their common sense for the sake of destructive novelties and experiments against human nature. A used car salesman can only sell a malfunctioning car to a person once. Dean's talk of "changing" America -- which means changing it into a country Americans won't recognize or want to live in -- will only persuade the ignorant.

And Dean can't even muster minimal charm for his supposed customers. He has started his sales pitch by bumptiously revealing his fundamental antipathy for a majority of Americans: he declared that he "hates" everything that the "Republicans stand for."

"We don't need to apologize for our principles," he says. "We need to talk about them in a different way."

Translation: let the great con begin.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1343900/posts

Dean Promises to 'Take This Country Back'

BET | 2-15-05 | Ed Wiley III and Tracy Scott

Promising to “take this country back for the people who built it,” Howard Dean took control of the Democratic Party Saturday, immediately drawing mixed reactions from the moderate and more liberal wings of the party.

“Today will be the beginning of the re-emergence of the Democratic Party,” said Dean, who was uncontested for the job after former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), party activist Donnie Fowler, former Ohio party Chairman David Leland, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg dropped out of the race. Dean replaces Terry McCauliffe, whose four-year term ended last week.

The former governor of Vermont, Dean became a national figure when he joined the race for the presidency. Early on in the primary season, Dean became the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination but withdrew after critics lambasted him for what’s been deemed the “Dean Scream.” The media played repeatedly a video of an impassioned Dean at the Iowa caucuses, his sleeves rolled up and collar unbuttoned, pumping his fist in air and letting out an amplified yowl.

It wasn’t his first misstep. Earlier in the race, Dean had been blasted by fellow Democrat Al Sharpton for saying he wanted to attract the rebel-flag-waving segment of society to his party, and by other Democrats for dissing the centrist politics of Bill Clinton.

But despite Dean’s somewhat embarrassing exit from the presidential race, many believe he is the right man to lead the Democratic National Committee, while others say Dean is too liberal and abrasive, and question whether he has what it takes to lead and unify the party.

Still other Democrats argue that the only issue now is how to combat an ideologically driven Republican Party that now controls the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House.

“This administration … believe[s] there should be no roof of opportunities for the rich and powerful, no safety net or floor for the poor,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “So we do call on our new DNC Chairman to move our party to the center – the moral center. We call on Howard Dean to do what he does best – to tell the truth, to stand up and fight for the defenseless and the weak, to point out the corrupt and biased priorities by which this administration, this Congress, and this GOP are pushing. On the crises of our times, Howard Dean will fight for a Democratic Party that’s occupies the moral center.”

Stephen Minarik, chairman of the State Republican Party disagrees.

Speaking to The Buffalo News recently, Minarik said, "Howard Dean is the personification of today's national Democratic Party - elite, radical, out of control and sadly out of touch with ordinary Americans."

Carrie Gordon Earll of Focus on the Family, a conservative organization, told Cybercast News Service: "Dean can be a wild card. If you go by his track record, he does tend to pull to the left, but not on everything. He may remake himself to be more moderate, but I don't believe that's who he really is."

Howard Dean's First E-Mail Message To The Party Faithful

This is derived from an avid Dean supporter who posted it on DU:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1343861/posts

Dear John,

You run this party.

On Saturday, I was honored when your representatives on the Democratic National Committee elected me Chairman. And I can't wait to get started. But when they voted, it wasn't about me -- they were voting for a plan for the future of our party.

That plan came from people like you -- from conversations I had with ordinary Democrats across the country. When those 447 people voted in Washington this weekend, they united around that plan.

Now I'm asking you to do the same. Those 447 people were a good start, but make no mistake -- I know that this is also your party. And our plan to reform the party can only become a reality with your endorsement. Please read our plan -- and commit to making it a reality:

http://www.democrats.org/plan

Your representatives in the DNC mandated bottom-up reform -- growing the Democratic Party in your neighborhood and every other community in America. They voted to compete in every state for every level of office. And they demanded a Democratic Party that stands up for itself and for an agenda that reflects our values. They didn't elect me because they think I can accomplish these things. They elected me because I believe that only you can.

Every single one of us must take responsibility for building our party. It's not enough to simply vote for Democrats -- in order to win, every one of us must deliver our message and values into our own community. That means changing the way we do business, and that's what this plan is about:

http://www.democrats.org/plan

The Republicans' biggest victory has been to convince many Democrats that we can only win by abandoning our values and doing what they say.

It's one of their favorite tactics -- just watch how right-wing pundits talk endlessly about the internal politics of our party. They try to divide Democrats by ideology just as they divide all Americans by race or gender or faith.

But there is no crisis of ideology in the Democratic Party, only a crisis of confidence. Bill Clinton once described the Democratic Party's problems in the era of George W. Bush, saying that in uncertain times people would rather have a leader who is strong and wrong than weak and right.

He's exactly right. And we become both weak and wrong when we abandon our core values for short-term political gain. But when we Democrats talk straight and stand up for ourselves, we have a huge advantage: We are both strong and right.

We will only turn that advantage into victory if we make a concrete plan and work hard to execute it. Declare your support and offer feedback now on the plan to build an organization that will help us win everywhere, and win with pride:

http://www.democrats.org/plan

Millions of Americans became Democrats last year. They sensed that they live in a society where ordinary people's problems and interests don't matter to our government. They chose the Democratic Party because we represent commonsense reform.

And millions more will become Democrats this year as we protect the Democratic Party's greatest achievement. We will not allow George Bush to phase out Social Security -- a Democratic policy that cured an epidemic of poverty among seniors and provides the guarantee of retirement with dignity.

Most importantly, millions of Democrats have become true stakeholders in our party. With grassroots action and small-dollar donations, you have taken our party's future into your own hands.

The stakes are too high to wait for others to lead. Every one of us has a personal responsibility for the future of our party -- and the future of our country. This isn't my chairmanship -- it is ours. So let's get to work together.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.
Chairman, Democratic National Committee

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