get donkey!

Why is he still around stinkin’ up the joint?

The Rittenhouse Review adresses an issue that has been bugging me for a couple of days now.

January 24th, 2003 Posted by Rob | Politics | no comments

It’s on, baby! (WTHHD Part III)

Dean is starting to aim at the other Democratic candidates, specifically John Kerry:

Dark-horse Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean opened fire Thursday on one of his rivals for the 2004 nomination, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, for voting to authorize President Bush to use military force against Iraq. Dean questioned Kerry’s vote to give Bush what he called “a blank check to go to war” in a congressional resolution on disarming Iraq.

[snip]

Referring to Kerry, Dean said, “I’m thrilled that there is now another Democrat speaking up for Americans who are concerned about the White House’s unilateralist foreign policy and the likely war with Iraq. But I am proud to remain the only elected official running for president who stood up to President Bush on Iraq, who said the Iraqi resolution was wrong, and who would have voted against it.”

[snip]

“We cannot rush into any military action that will result in our sons and daughters coming home in pine boxes without a full understanding of why that sacrifice is required,” Dean said.

He also called on Bush to specify how many troops would be required to defeat Iraq, to explain how long an American occupying force would remain there and to spell out an “exit strategy.”

“The president has not made a case for war, nor has he answered any of the obvious questions raised by this military ramp-up,” Dean said.

Here’s another article about Dean from New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.

Some snippets:

“With me, what you see is what you get,” he said. “And you’re not going to like every bit of it, but you’re always going to know where I stand and why I stand there.’”

[snip]

“In economic policy, we have gone from the largest surplus in the history of the country to the largest deficit in the history of the country,” he said. “Now the fact is, no Republican president has balanced the budget for 34 years. If you want fiscal responsibility and you want somebody who is going to balance the budget, you’re going to have to elect a Democrat, because Republicans don’t do that - they can’t manage money.”

He said disciplined budgets square with progressive principles. He pointed to his record in Vermont, where he said he paid down one quarter of the state’s debt with surpluses that arrived during the 1990s boom; unlike most states, Vermont isn’t cutting education spending or health care programs because of the recession.

“If you want social justice, you have to have a balanced budget, ultimately, so you don’t cut the programs people really need when the revenues turn down,” he said.

Dean said he would balance the budget not by cutting spending, but by repealing the $1.3 billion Bush tax cut. He said the money could also help pay for the judicious expansion of government programs.

“People will support roads, education and health care every single time” over tax cuts, he said, “because most middle class people didn’t get a tax cut in this country that’s worthy of the name.”

The cut could pay for universal health insurance, Dean said - not a government-run program, but expansion of existing programs to cover those who don’t get coverage through their employers. He said Vermont had expanded its Medicaid program to help cover all children under 18 and to provide long-term care for seniors in their homes, rather than institutions.

Elderly people desperately need a prescription drug benefit, Dean said, adding he would support adding a drug benefit to Medicare, as the Democrats proposed last year. “We can’t promise seniors everything, but we can promise them that nobody’s ever going to have to choose between paying their rent and getting the medications they need to live their lives in a reasonable lifestyle,” he said.

Moving on to education, Dean excoriated his opponents for voting for Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, calling it an “unfunded mandate” that would trample on local control of schools.

[snip]

“Our candidates think the best way to get elected is to talk to everybody about voting for things like the leave-every-school board-behind education bill, which is going to cost the New Hampshire taxpayers $109 million,” he said. “. . . . I can’t wait for those four guys from Congress to come up here and explain to us why they wanted to raise your property taxes after they supported a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America,” he said.

Dean also criticized his opponents for voting to give Bush a “blank check” on military intervention in Iraq - and, now, changing their tune on the issue.

“Today, they’re running around telling you folks they’re all anti-war,” he said. (Later, he acknowledged that Lieberman’s vote was consistent with the senator’s comparatively “hawkish” position on Iraq.) “We’re never going to elect a president that does those things. If I voted for the Iraq resolution, I’d be standing in favor, supporting it right now in front of you.”

Dean said he would have voted instead for the Biden-Lugar resolution, which he said supported disarming Saddam using multilateral action, and which did not call for a “regime change.”

He said Bush had approached the Iraq issue from the wrong direction - he should have taken the issue to the United Nations first, before he threatened unilateral military action to oust Saddam.

Bush has still not produced the evidence necessary to convince the world - and the American people - that military intervention is necessary, Dean said. He called Iraq “maybe the third, at worst” biggest danger to American security. North Korea’s moves toward revamping its nuclear weapons program present a greater threat, Dean said, adding that that that issue will probably be resolved through diplomacy.

Al Qaida is a far greater menace than Saddam at the moment, Dean said, and Bush has not done enough to deprive such fundamentalist terrorist networks of the American oil money that helps fund their organizations.

“We can do better, but it requires a renewable energy policy and an oil conservation policy that makes sense,” Dean said. “We are not going to change that unless we change presidents.”

So Democrats, he concluded, must nominate a candidate who can win.

“Remember,” he said, “we’re not going to beat Bush with Bush lite.”

Here’s another about the same visit to NH, but I won’t quote from it.

I’m really starting to like this guy.

January 24th, 2003 Posted by Rob | Politics | no comments