BUT HOW WILL IT PLAY IN DIXVILLE NOTCH?:

Gephardt posture irks some in party (Susan Milligan, 10/3/2002, Boston Globe)

President Bush was in the Rose Garden, laying out the details of a resolution against Iraq as Republicans stood loyally behind him. But there was another face in this familiar picture yesterday: House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt, standing beside a president who is aggressively raising money to block the Democrats from winning a majority in the House.

The scene startled and even upset some of Gephardt's fellow Democrats who have watched their leader become a leading hawk on Iraq and cast other votes they did not expect.

[A]nalysts and some Democrats in the House wonder whether Gephardt isn't also looking ahead to his own political future. The minority leader has brushed aside questions about whether he will run for president in 2004, but he has made many trips to New Hampshire and other early primary states.

So after spending last week mewling about how George Bush was politicizing the war in order to win the midterms, the Democrats are going to spend this week accusing each other (accurately we might add) of politicizing the war in order to count presidential coup on one another. Here's a shocking thought: maybe the decision whether to go to war or not is fundamentally political. Ya think? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 3, 2002 11:07 PM