Dean & Gingrich

[stickdog]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17608-2003Sep29.html

For months, the rap on Dean was that he was too liberal to win the general election. Lieberman has been leading the Dean-is-a-liberal-baddie charge for weeks. Now along comes Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), who is fending off a challenge by Dean in the crucial state of Iowa (see Sept. 17 Talking Points), firing away from the governor’s left flank with charges that he cozied up to GOP bogeyman Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s. Gephardt was on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday repeating charges that Dean sided with Gingrich in trying to cut Medicare.

It's somewhat of an odd charge, given that Dean, then chairman of the National Governors Association, first caught the eye of the national media with his exceedingly harsh denunciations of the new Gingrich-led Congress in 1995, the year after the historic Republican Revolution. The Dean campaign has noted that Dean appeared at several press conferences and events with Gephardt in 1995 to protest GOP plans to overhaul the welfare system and press for a balanced budget amendment.

In the archives of The Washington Post we find this story that Balz wrote in January 1995:

"The chairman of the National Governors' Association, Democratic Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, yesterday ripped into the Republicans' welfare reform plan as a policy 'to starve children and kick old people out of their houses’ and attacked Republican governors in extraordinarily harsh language for helping to negotiate it.

"Dean said the plan, outlined Friday in Washington, is the work of 'extremists who have taken over Congress.' In a telephone interview, he vowed, 'I'll be damned if I'm going to let extremists take over the National Governors' Association.'"


So which is: too liberal to win or too conservative to trust?

[w13rd0]

1. Oh yeah...

...sounds like him and Newt were bosom buddies...

All that's left is Dean is just right...

[alexwcovington]

2. Analyzing....

That's a mind bender you got there :P

Go Dean!

[TrueBlueDem]

3. I'm confused. Is he another McGovern or another Gingrich? (n/t)

[Meshuga]

7. He's no Gingrich...

Gep did not accuse him of being Newt Gingrich either.

But, I fear Dean is winning the same amount of electoral votes as McGovern if he wins the nomination.

[sandnsea]

4. He's too wishy-washy to trust

He says Saddam is a threat and must be disarmed, we should give the inspectors 30-60 days and then go in unilaterally; and then tries to claim he's anti-war.

He stands behind massive Republican Medicare cuts in 1995, then pretends it was the Clinton cuts of 1997 and that they were all the same thing.

He's wishy-washy, that's what he is. Nice spinning though, he gets more Rovian every day.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

5. Dean is neither too liberal to trust nor too conservative to trust.

The operative question is whether he is honest enough to trust.

[DrFunkenstein]

6. A Centrist That Sounds Like An Unstable Radical

Just what I wanted for X-mas! I'm sure Bush will have a real hard time painting him as a fringe looney. That'll take about $5 million. What's he gonna do with the other $245 million?

[stickdog]

8. Re-write history?

Buy Kerry a personality?

[DrFunkenstein]

18. Make An Argument?

Buy Dean a foreign policy?

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DrFunkenstein]

19. I Can Only Imagine What Comments I Inspired

<>

[helleborient]

22. And this relates to the original thread how....?

Some of us are slow and can't see it as anything but a hijack with a photo...

[helleborient]

21. About as hard as painting John Kerry as a looney leftist...

Isn't that what George McGovern, another heroic liberal senator, was painted as?

[AP]

10. Those are Dean's comments on welfare, not Medicare, right?

Isn't Gephardt's problem that Dean wanted to dismantle Medicare?

It's not the same thing. Right?

[Duder]

11. Would that be the Gephardt...

...that was pro-gun and anti abortion before running for president in 88?

[emcglynn]

12. eye of newt

or could it be that Gep, Kerry, and the boys at the DLC do not want to give up there power to some upstart ex gov.

[AP]

14. Well, if that upstart ex gov wants to dismantle medicare...

...Gephardt is certainly entitled to point it out, no?

[indigo32]

17. Wow

"well that upstart ex gov wants to dismantle medicare"
that wouldn't be an exageration would it? NAWWWWWWW

[AP]

20. OK. Since writing that, I read the other post in GD, I believe,

that said he wante to increase fuding by 7% which wasn't keeping pace with the growth of the population, and would have been a de facto reduction in services.

It was half the increase that Clinton eventually signed into law.

[AP]

13. Is that a reply to my question?

Pro-gun/antiabortion doesn't change the fact that Gep was talking about Dean's position on Medicare, and the quotes above talk about welfare, which are two different things.

[Duder]

15. Yes, it's relevant in the same sense...

...as someone that would say Gephardt would appoint judges that were opposed to Roe vs Wade based on his pre 1988 positions. Do you honestly believe that the doctor wants to dismantle Medicare? If so, then you're one of the gullible voters that Dick's old Mediscare campaign tactic works on. Kudos to Dick.

[AP]

16. But it's not relevant in the sense that it doesn't address the issue.

Gephardt was talking about apples, and Dean is replying by referring to oranges.

Medicare-apples. Welfare-oranges.