Reply #165: Where Dean admits he will move to the right....

[kerry-is-my-prez]

http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml

"Back in February 2003, Dean candidly admitted to Salon magazine that if he were to win the nomination of his party he would "probably dispense with some of the more rhetorical flourishes. One time I said the Supreme Court is so far right you couldn’t see it anymore. Next summer I won’t be talking like that. It’s true and I’m not ashamed to have said it, but it doesn’t sound very presidential."6


http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/6336151.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Garrison Nelson, a Vermont political analyst, thinks Dean can move toward the middle - because that's his instinct. Nelson said: "I've known him 20 years. Howard became a liberal six months ago. Up here, he never got any kind of visceral response from liberals. I couldn't count more than 10 people who would've walked through fire for the guy.

"He was always a man of the middle, what we used to call a `Rockefeller Republican.' His father and grandfather were stockbrokers. He comes from old money. So has he really changed? Or is the Democratic party desperate to be in love with somebody? I think they're desperate to be in love."

McMahon, the Dean consultant, is happy to talk about Vermont. He said, "Dean balanced 11 state budgets - and it's not required there." He is pro-gun rights and pro-death penalty. He usually favored big business in environmental disputes. And he once said of welfare recipients that if they "had any self-esteem, they'd be working."


http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml
Though he has been dubbed a "raging liberal" by admirers and critics alike, Howard Dean governed Vermont strictly within the framework of the conservative Democratic Leadership Council.

Many people on the Vermont left see Dean’s current posture as politically motivated. "The notion that he is a liberal is ludicrous to those of us who worked with him in Vermont," said Terrill Bouricius, a former state representative.4 Dean admits that he recognized early on that the popular anger at Bush is "a raw energy, an energy that I know could be channeled."5

-snip-

But such political maneuvering is nothing new for Dean. Upon becoming governor of Vermont in 1991, after the sudden death of then-Republican Governor Richard Snelling, Dean made a sharp turn to the right and pursued that course ever since. In his 11 years as governor, Dean would shift rightward on one position after another, all the while claiming to be concerned for the needy and less-fortunate, and disappointing all who thought they were getting someone who would govern from the liberal end of the political spectrum.