I don’t know what Howard Dean will do as DNC chair over the next 4 years, but I do know you’ll have to go directly to the source material to find out about it. You will not be able to trust the mainstream media’s reporting on him. All you will hear is “The Scream” and what a wild-eyed leftie he is. But Dean gets it. He knows where the national Republican party is weakest with the average American: fiscal responsibility. And that’s what this so-called wild-eyed leftie led off with, the need to be fiscally conservative. FromHoward Dean’s DNC acceptance speech:
The first thing we have to do is stand up for what we believe in.
This week, the Republicans introduced a $2.5 trillion budget that deliberately conceals the cost of their fiscal recklessness.
Their budget doesn’t account for the cost of the war in Iraq, or privatizing Social Security. It cuts education, children’s health, veterans benefits, and community policing.
As far as I’m concerned, this budget does only two things:
It brings Enron-style accounting to our nation’s capital.
And it demonstrates what Americans are beginning to see: Republicans cannot be trusted with your money.
The Republicans know the America they want… and they are not afraid to use any means to get there.
But there is something that this Administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe in; the fiscally responsible, socially progressive values for which Democrats have always stood and fought.
Because we are what we believe.
We Democrats believe in fiscal responsibility and we’re the only ones who have delivered it.
The first time our nation balanced its budget, it was Andrew Jackson, father of the Democratic Party, who did it. The last time our nation balanced its budget, it was Bill Clinton who did it. Democratic governors do it every single year.
Not one Republican President has balanced the budget in almost 40 years. Borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. Americans cannot trust the Republicans with their money.
Now, this gives short-shrift to the many local and state Republicans who practice fiscal responsibility better in many cases than the stae & local Democrats. But, I think Howard Dean has the national Republicans in power dead to rights – they blow up the budget every time a Republican is in the White House. Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II have all presided over massive deficits. After 25 years, I think it’s safe to call it a pattern. Your average American doesn’t want to hear about the plight of African-American midget lesbians with learning disabilities. But the idea that Republican Presidents have, without fail, run the government into a sea of red-ink, bankrupting the futures of their children, might hit home. And, it’s true. That was Ross Perot’s message and, say what you will about Mr. Perot, but his message was a strong one. He was a third-party candidate who received almost 20% of the popular vote. That speaks of a major failing on the part of the two major parties. We’ll see if Dr. Dean can help the Democrats win elections with fiscal responsibility as part of his message. That’s how he governed in Vermont. I know it doesn’t fit nicely into the mainstream media’s narrative of how Dr. Dean is supposed to be a lunatic liberal, but maybe they’ll see fit to report the facts instead of their story once in awhile.
Leave a Reply