Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders’ rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year.
I don’t care what the poll numbers are. If the Dems don’t do something about their illustrious leader, and get him to just shut the hell up, the republicans could run dead cats in the next elections and still pick up seats.
Dean is the best marketing tool for the Republicans that we’ve ever had.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I don’t know… it seems that the dems basically go along more personal opinions than party lines.
[/quote]
What do you base this on? Look at the congressional voting record. Party line pretty much all the time.
For the rank and file democrats in Congress to be ducking and running from the position of the Dem leadership is indeed a very important development. Especially when you have folks worried about maintining the seats they have.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I don’t know… it seems that the dems basically go along more personal opinions than party lines.
Do the repubs stick together better or what?[/quote]
I think you may have hit on a key point for many dems. Unfortunately, it frequently isn’t convicitions the Dean’s of the world run on - it’s only about getting the vote.
For example: When Lieberman ran the primary, he ran as a highly religious, orthodox jew, and he hoped to pull votes from that segment. And, he pressed for the pro-abortion votes. Ultimately, he was ex-communication from the jewish chruch and he lost votes in both segements.
Personally, I would rather see someone stick to one position rather than play the whole field. On the dem side, I’ve seen too much of the switch-hitting on issues and it has left me unsatisfied.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I don’t know… it seems that the dems basically go along more personal opinions than party lines.
Do the repubs stick together better or what?[/quote]
I think there is a variety of ideas and people under the GOP tent, but they have quite a bit of common glue.
The Democrats, by and large, have, what I think, are large rifts in thinking - the party is almost ‘too’ broad. Think of a garden variety union member and a Howard Dean wealthy, twenty-something techie out in Frisco that supports gay marriage - what the hell are they going to talk about?
The Democratic party really is two entities - the old guard of liberals and new guard of lefty Social Democrats in the European mold. I don’t think this arrangment can last much longer.
I take back every comment I made about Dean being smart and astute.
He is a liability for the Democrats. They should ditch him ASAP.
Like RJ said the polls don’t matter now. When the campaigns begin all the Republicans have to do is tie the Democratic candidates to Dean and it will result in many Republican wins.
For the good of the Democratic party and the country they need to dump him.
