Reply #51: Dean is older guard than the old guard, and far more conservative

[Nicholas_J]

Indeed, as Norman Solomon observes, there's a real disconnect between Dean's media image and his record.


"But the Democratic Leadership Council need not despair. Most of the nation's political journalists, including pro-Democrat pundits, insist that the party should not nominate someone too far 'left' -- which usually means anybody who's appreciably more progressive than the DLC. That bias helps to account for the frequent mislabeling of Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who has risen to the top tier of contenders for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
After Dean officially announced his campaign on June 23, some news stories identified him with the left. It's a case of mistaken identity. 'He's really a classic Rockefeller Republican -- a fiscal conservative and social liberal,' according to University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson."

Slate's William Saletan notices the discrepancy, too. The establishment doesn't

http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/27/we_473_02.html#one


Those who know Dean say he’s no classic liberal
By ROSS SNEYD

Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Howard Dean may be many things, say those who worked with him over nearly a dozen years as Vermont governor, but an elitist liberal is hardly one of them.

He’s actually a lot more moderate — many would say conservative — than the reputation he’s built during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.


http://premium1.fosters.com/2003/news/may%5F03/may%5F19/news/reg%5Fvt0519a.asp

Is Howard Dean the Crypto-Republican Candidate?




Though Dean tries to give the impression that he is for the average man, Elizabeth Ready, the liberal Democrat state auditor and a regular Dean adversary when she served in the Legislature, makes it clear that "his top advisors were all money people, brokers and bankers."

Thinking Independents and Democrats must avoid any connection to the Republican-influenced Dean Campaign. It would be a disaster if Dean were to become the Democratic candidate for president. Bush would win an easy victory by tarring Dean as a soft-headed liberal who is out of touch with the national mainstream.


http://www.hermes-press.com/HDean/dean_republican.htm

Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus, cut taxes, forced many on welfare to go to work, abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures, antagonized environmentalists, won the top rating from the National Rifle Association and consistently embraced business interests.

After winning the first of his five elections for governor by more than 50 points, he barely got a majority in 2000, in part because of third-party challenges from the left that, in the 2002 election absent Dr. Dean, helped hand the governor's chair to a Republican.

To the dismay of liberals in the Legislature who wanted to expand social and environmental programs, Dr. Dean and his chief economic adviser, Harlan Sylvester, a conservative stockbroker and investment banker, stuck with the Snelling budget-cutting plan. Helped by a booming economy, the state's finances improved sharply. Dr. Dean lowered income tax rates by 30 percent.


http://www.politicalpunk.com/~politica/politicalpunkfordeanarchive/000129.php


http://www.politicalpunk.com/~politica/politicalpunkfordeanarchive/000129.php

Why bother. The kind of changes Dean brings are those that the Traditional Republican Party platform is based on , and aptly, Dean is described in many plaves, by many Vermonters as a "Rockerfeller Republican" Dean and investment banker beofre he became a doctor will be a nice pocket sized president for the conservatives on Wall Street, Instead of the White House having Ken Lay to advise them on energy policy, Dean will have the S&P 500 companies to simply dictate to him what the Government will do.

We have someone just like Dean already in the White House.