DEATH WISH

'Gutsy' Dean rouses Democrats with call to arms (Donald Lambro, February 22, 2003, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Democrats' bitter split over Iraq broke wide open yesterday at their winter meeting when presidential candidate Howard Dean won standing ovations as he sharply rebuked party leaders and his political rivals for backing President Bush's war policies.

The long-simmering division in the party over whether to go to war to disarm Saddam Hussein erupted at the second day of the Democratic National Committee's gathering to preview its presidential contenders, who denounced many of Mr. Bush's policies and vowed to defeat him in 2004.

"What I want to know is, why is the Democratic Party leadership supporting the president's unilateral war on Iraq?" the former Vermont governor asked DNC members who were packed into a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill, with an overflow audience in two adjacent rooms. Why, he asked, jabbing a finger into the air for emphasis, did three of his Democratic rivals back the administration's war resolution in Congress? [...]

Compared with Mr. Dean's reception, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut received a tepid response when they explained their reasons for supporting Mr. Bush's war plans in Iraq. The response to former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois was somewhat muted despite her opposition to military action.

When Mr. Gephardt said, "I'm proud that I wrote the resolution that helped lead the president to make his case to the United Nations," someone in the audience shouted, "Shame." [...]

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said that "Dean won the day hands down," adding that his feisty delivery and anti-war rhetoric "could carry the day in many state primaries." But she did not see his anti-war agenda "winning the White House, because people want to be sure that we protect our national security and our homeland."

Noam Schreiber has just written, in the New Republic, that the Democrats have become captives of opinion polling--even of a few particular pollsters--and that it's made them cautious on issues like Iraq. But in a presidential nomination fight this effect is mitigated both because there are so many candidates there are necessarily a wide variety of pollsters and because they poll Democrats, not the whole country. Unfortunately for the Democrats, this is far more likely to be disastrous for them than the phenomenon that Mr. Schreiber is concerned with. That's because the Second Iraq War is the most popular in our nation's history before we've even won it, but it's terribly unpopular among the Democrat faithful. And it's impossible to imagine that subsequent actions--in North Korea, Syria, South Lebanon, or wherever--are going to be any more acceptable to primary voters. This is going to push the field Left and exacerbate their weakness on National Security at a time when the nation genuinely cares about such things. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2003 6:18 AM