Krugman: The Fighting Moderates (on Dean as DNC and the SS fight)

[BlueInRed]

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/15/opinion/15krugman.html

snip
The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use any means to get there," Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. "But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe."

Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House.

. . . In 2001 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that President Bush's tax cuts were consistent with an agenda that was only moderately conservative. In 2002 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that the push for war with Iraq was really about eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

But in 2005 it takes an act of willful blindness not to see that the Bush plan for Social Security is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most important achievement of the New Deal. The Republicans themselves say so: the push for privatization is following the playbook laid out in a 1983 Cato Journal article titled "A 'Leninist' Strategy," and in a White House memo declaring that "for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win - and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."
snip

Gotta love Krugman.

[GetTheRightVote]

1. These people are very scary, we must get them out of our govt

:kick:

[Why Syzygy]

2. Should he not be president?

I wish him the best with the DNC chair, but I think of what might have been.

Given the religious right (extremism - to be nice) .. moderate is something to shoot for.

This is confusing. Since when is Lenin a right winger?
Someone give me a history lesson.

[BlueInRed]

4. Yeah, that Cato paper is pretty oddly titled.

I assume it has something to do with tactics Lenin used to take power. I'd like to see the paper Krugman refers to for the context. :hi:

But, I trust Krugman's accuracy and analysis. And it's great to know he gets Dean and will be there to defend him if necessary.

[Dirk39]

6. Hello from Germany,

many of the intellectuals among PNAC and the neoconservatives were anti-stalinist Trotzkyists, later belonging to the often CIA-founded anti-communist left in the USA, before they became "neo-conservative" revolutionairies. And in their own publications and internally they were often refering to their "theoretical" background from long ago. As in the quoted article from 1983.

A few examples I remember:
Norman Podhoretz (Partisan Review)
Irving Kristol (a former Trotzkyist, many consider him to be the intellectual godfather of the neo-cons)
Melvin Lasky

This is the background of that Cato-article.

Dirk

[BlueInRed]

3. self delete - replied to wrong post

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Krugman just may have nailed this part:

But Deanism isn't about turning to the left: it's about making a stand. ...and then turning left!