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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Thursday, December 04, 2003
As I've said before, the Dean campaign is a great campaign with an average candidate. On the plus side, this is sheer genius. In a letter to Dean supporters Tuesday, Joe Trippi called on the grassroots to show the power of the movement you've built by helping to re-elect Leonard Boswell, the lone Democrat in Iowa's Congressional delegation and a top target of Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee. The Boswell campaign informs us that in less than two days 1,374 Dean supporters have raised more than $51,557 for their campaign, with an average contribution of $38. Keep spreading the word that the movement you have built plans to take back the Congress when we elect Howard Dean next year. It works in so many ways. It makes Dean look great to Democrats in Iowa and elsewhere. It's a powerful inducement to elected officials to endorse Dean in the hope that they will get some of this largesse. And it's an impressive display of grass roots support. It's a brilliant idea and Dean should follow up on it. Maybe even have some sort of "Democrat of the Week" setup where he can send money to key congressional and state candidates. Clark, who has stolen pages from Dean's playbook before, might run with this too. I'd love to see the Clark and Dean camps competing to see who could raise the most money for good local candidates in tough races.
Less impressive is Dean's howler from Hardball.
Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons. I hate to admit it (I rarely have to) but Andrew Sullivan is completely right about this. If Bush had said, not once but three times, that the US needed to take a firmer stance towards the Soviet Union, we'd all be ROTFL. You'd hear about nothing else on every lefty blog for a week. And if Dean says something like this as the nominee, Leno and Letterman will run a weeks worth of jokes about Dean's plans to declare war on the Third Reich and the Klingon Empire. With the country far more focused on foreign policy than in recent elections, I really don't feel comfortable running a candidate who makes blunders like this. |
