Mark Steyn: Tomorrow he’ll be yesterday’s man (Howard Dean)

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 07/05/03 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

[OldFriend]

Which candidate would choose Dean for his veep?

[Miss Marple]

Heheheh. I am glad to know that my impression of Dean as arrogant and unable to tolerate criticism was not simply a fleeting impression from television, but rather the truth.

The Rat primaries are getting very interesting.

[wideawake]

This year, gay is the new black.

Mark Steyn is my hero.

[MattinNJ]

At least when Bill Clinton sold out the Left on welfare and governed as an Eisenhower Republican, he was getting some terrific oral sex in return.

ROTFLMAO.

Dean’s already slipped easily into a standard catchphrase, prefacing any answer to any question on policy — healthcare, gay marriage, genocide in the Congo

(Sound of me falling off my chair) Somebody make him stop-I can't breathe-ROTFLMAO

[MeekOneGOP]

LOL!

As for the bus-and-truck McCain act, that got a workout the other day when Dean formally launched his campaign in Burlington, Vermont and cast himself as the outsider among a bunch of establishment drones. ‘It’s a bit of a club down there,’ he said. ‘All the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I’m doing is breaking into the country club.’

In normal circumstances, this would have been a bit of consultant-scripted boilerplate outsiderism — except that a few days earlier his son Paul and three buddies had been arrested for breaking into Burlington Country Club to steal some beer. Realising his ‘gaffe’, the governor shrugged to his aide, ‘Why do I say these things?’

[Magnolia]

someone you’ve known for years and always written off as a mediocrity with no talents suddenly leaps to phenomenal success.

Of course I thought the same thing about billyjeff.

[MeekOneGOP]

Of course, burglary is NOTHING compared to underage drinking !! < /sarcasm >

[Izzy Dunne]

he’s a thousand pints of Lite,

LOL!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Mike Dukakis ?

[MeekOneGOP]

Well, ain't that sweet ???

But on the issues this crowd cares about, Dean is an expert. The reason he’s piling up all the big money from out of state boils down to two words: civil unions. Three years ago, Vermont became the first state in the nation to recognise a form of legal union for same-sex couples, and that puts Dean on the cutting edge of the issue du jour. Canada recently announced it would change its marriage laws to permit gays and lesbians to wed, Massachusetts is expected to go the same way later this summer, and the US Supreme Court just struck down the various state sodomy laws. Dean now says bringing civil unions to Vermont was ‘the most important event in my political life’. At the time, he was going round the state telling folks he was only doing it because the Vermont Supreme Court made him, and, instead of the usual showboating public ceremony, he signed the legislation behind closed doors. But out in Hollywood all Barbra Streisand and the other high rollers know is that, if gay marriage is your big priority rather than Iraq and national security and all the other peripheral junk, then Dean’s your man. In a way, he’s the first gay candidate, the first beneficiary of a prominent, organisationally effective, big-money gay bloc in the Democratic party. This year, gay is the new black.

MICHAEL STUPARYK/TORONTO STAR

Michael Stark, left, and Michael Lashner pop champagne
and kiss after their wedding ceremony yesterday.
Leshner called the ruling, "Day One for millions of gays
and lesbians around the world."

Gay couple married after ruling
(Toronto, Canada)

[MJY1288]

Great stuff

[kesg]

But out in Hollywood all Barbra Streisand and the other high rollers know is that, if gay marriage is your big priority rather than Iraq and national security and all the other peripheral junk, then Dean’s your man.

Mark Steyn has an amazing ability to cut to the very heart of a matter, doesn't he?

[wideawake]

Well that one on the top right looks like he's got a couple of months left until he succumbs to the ass flu.

I presume the "wedding" happened in order to make sure that his family have no rights to his estate.

[m1911]

More Dean, in that wonderful Steyn style.

I'd already heard that the civil unions issue was forced by the Vermont Supreme Court, I didn't know that Dean went around explaining that to everyone, thereby disclaiming responsibility. No big deal really, it's standard politician stuff - but it should provide some lovely commercial fodder of Dean campaigning for president on his civil rights record and campaigning for governor explaining that it's not his fault.

Oh what a year and a half it's going to be.

[rudypoot]

Thanks pokey. Where the heck does Mark get this??? lol

[mylife]

He didn’t do much for Vermont. The eastern part of the state, just over the Connecticut river from me, is a patchwork of broken-down farms whose owners pay some of the highest taxes in the Republic and get very little to show for it, except the sense that they’ve lost control over their own affairs.

"Well in Vermont, This is how we did it!"

[jpl]

Which candidate would choose Dean for his veep?

General Clark, in order to try to give the ticket credibility in that arena.

[You Dirty Rats]

If he won the nomination, then he'd want somebody who would make him look like a Centrist. That means one of the three left wingnuts.

I don't think he'd have the stones to pick an African-American candidate, certainly not one of the two available.

That leaves Dennis.

For all of us Clevelanders who remember Dennis debating George Forbes, how great would a Kucinich - Cheney debate be?