Howard Dean: Southern Comfort?
By: Lowell
Published On: 2/13/2005 2:00:00 AM
At first glance, yesterday's election of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) may appear to be less-than-good news for Tim Kaine and other moderate-to-conservative southern Democrats. After all, Dean has been portrayed by the Republican Party and by the right-wing media as as a gay-marriage-supporting, fiscally irresponsible, typical northeastern, far-out liberal. Dean's also been portrayed, frankly, as a screaming nutcase. But we here at RaisingKaine believe that these are all false stereotypes that couldn?t be further from the truth. We also believe that the Republicans are in for some seriously unpleasant surprises in coming months and years as their illusions and fantasies are shattered one by one.
First of all, let?s do away with the notion that Vermont is some weird, urban, ultra-liberal haven for a bunch of Woodstock/Birkenstock counterculture hippies. To the contrary, Vermont is one of the most rural states in America. Several years ago, my wife and I visited the state and were struck by just how little city there is there. As we drove out of Burlington, Vermont's largest "city" (in quotes because it's actually a town of just 39,000 people, smaller than Charlottesville or Blacksburg, Virginia), we quickly found ourselves in agriculture country. Another thing we noticed very quickly as we drove across the state was the many farms displaying ?Take Back Vermont!" signs on their property, in protest against what they saw as the recently passed "civil unions" law for homosexuals in the state. So much for liberal stereotypes of Vermont.
And Howard Dean is certainly no dyed-in-the-wool, tax-loving liberal. At the least, Dean certainly didn?t govern like one during his years at the helm of Vermont, where he won an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was endorsed by that group eight times! As Stephen Moore, a Senior Fellow at the Libertarian-Conservative Cato Institute (and President of the anti-tax, ultra-conservative "Club for Growth") relates in The Weekly Standard, "an obscure Democratic governor" named Howard Dean came to the Cato Institute several years ago as a guest speaker and "charmed nearly everyone in the boardroom." According to Moore, when Dean left the room, everyone agreed that they had "finally found a Democrat [they] could work with." How can this be?
For starters, Dean convinced the ultra-conservative, "hardened cynics" (in Moore?s own words) at Cato that he truly was "a free-market enthusiast, a tax cutter, and an enemy of big-government excess." In his article, Moore extols Dean for being "frugal" as the "business-friendly" governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002. Moore further heaps {Libertarian} praise on Governor Dean for "cut[ting] formerly sacrosanct welfare spending to keep the state out of debt," for approving "millions of dollars' worth of incentives to lure smoke stacks back into the Green Mountain State," for launching a school voucher program, for supporting "electricity deregulation to take monopolistic pricing power away from big utilities," for leaving Vermont with $10 million budget surplus when he left office in January 2003, and generally for governing as "a very right-wing Democrat." Moore even goes so far as to call Dean "Bill Clinton, but without the skirt-chasing." And Moore means that as a compliment!
So what on earth was Howard Dean talking about during the Democratic primaries when he emphasized the importance of appealing to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks?" Rather awkward and blunt-spoken, no doubt. On the other hand, it?s also rather obvious what message Dean was articulating loud and clear: namely, that Democrats badly need to win back southern, white male voters, the same folks who voted reliably Democratic from Reconstruction through the late 1960s.
It is worth noting, by the way, since Dean's remarks have been taken wildly out of context and distorted by the media, that the former Vermont Governor received a standing ovation for his February 2003 speech, from a roomful of Democrats no less, with the following remarks: "White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals on the back ought to be voting with us, and not [Republicans], because their kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too." You can say that again, Dr. Dean!
After being (predictably) attacked for his remarks by his Democratic rivals for his remarks, Dean elaborated further, in words that actually could have been spoken by President Bill Clinton, Governor Mark Warner, Senator John Edwards, General Wesley Clark or Lt. Governor Tim Kaine: "We have working white families in the South voting for tax cuts for the richest one percent while their children remain with no health care?[t]he only way we're going to beat George Bush is if Southern white working families and African-American working families come together under the Democratic tent, as they did under FDR." Truer words were never spoken.
And what about Dean?s other controversial comments in November 2003, that Southern voters were growing tired of incessant Republican demagoguery on issues related to "guns, God and gays?" Again, Dean?s words were a bit awkward and bluntly honest (starting to sense a pattern here, that this guy?s not just another blow-dried politician?), but Dean?s analysis also got directly at an important, even fundamental truth of current American politics. Namely, Dean cut right to the hear of Republican strategy: to use "guns, God and gays" as divisive "wedge issues," and as a way of confusing people into voting against their own self interests -- on jobs, health care, taxes, and education. Frankly, we?ve got to hand it the right-wing Republican strategists: although this has been an extremely cynical strategy, it has also been a highly effective one ? up until now, that is.
In other words, by falsely and cynically painting the Democratic Party as anti-God, anti-gun and for the so-called "homosexual agenda," Republican strategists know exactly what they?re doing -- playing their favorite politics of "divide and conquer," while appealing to the "lesser angels" of human nature -- rather than seeking to "unite and govern." They do this, of course, strictly and for no other reason than to win election. And they are good at it, too.
To his credit, Howard Dean isn?t fooled in the least bit by this unsavory-yet-effective strategy and has called the Republicans on it in no uncertain terms. Of course, the Republicans predictably have fired back by even further distorting Dean?s words, if that is possible, and also by "shooting the messenger" -- another favorite strategy of our friends on the (far) right. But Republican political tactics can?t change the fact that the core Dean/Edwards/Warner/Kaine message itself ? that Democrats are people of faith and values fighting for ordinary working Americans, not just the rich, powerful, and well-connected -- is as true as it's ever been.
The bottom line here regarding Howard Dean?s election as DNC Chairman is that it is, against the wildly wishful thinking of the radical right wing (and conventional wisdom among the so-called-liberal media, or SCLM), very good news for southern moderate/conservative Democrats like Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.
For starters, Southern Democrats now have an ally in Washington: someone who understands the critical importance of the South, and someone who believes in the same things that they do ? fiscal responsibility, faith and family. They?ve also got someone willing to fight hard for the South, who has pledged to rebuild the Democratic Party in the most conservative parts of America, and who emphasized all this by stating, "I'll pretty much be living in red states in the South and West for quite a while." Finally, the Tim Kaines and Mark Warners of the world now have someone in Washington DC who believes, as they do, in being a real "uniter not a divider" -- as opposed to certain other politicians in Washington who, it turns out, are "all hat and no cattle" on this issue.
We here at RaisingKaine.com would like to congratulate Dr. Dean on his election as DNC Chairman, wish him well, and invite him down here to Virginia both early and often. Because, in Howard Dean, what we?ve got is some serious "Southern Comfort" by way of Vermont. Welcome to the South, Governor Dean!
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