Howard Dean's mistaken foray into inclusivenessPublished November 9, 2003Memo
From: Chairperson, Ideological Purity Task Force, Democratic National Committee
To: Democratic presidential candidates
Re: Confederate flags and other matters
Folks, I'm afraid it's time to remind you of the old maxim that Republicans look for converts, and Democrats look for heretics. Let's keep those home fires burning! I know Howard Dean has learned the most important thing about this broad, diverse, tolerant, multicultural party of ours: If you're not like us, we don't want you.
Gov. Dean made a grave error, as the rest of you were kind enough to point out, when he said he wanted "to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks." His idea seemed to be that we would rather have someone like that vote Democratic than Republican. While this may have a certain crazy logic, it gets everything backward.
Sure, we could use the votes of the many Southern males who still have an attachment to symbols of the Old South. Back in the old days, those guys would no more vote Republican than they would wear pink underwear, and they helped us win a lot of elections.
But we have to attend to some basic hygiene here. What would people think if the wrong sort of people showed up at the polls wearing a Howard Dean button? Why, they'd assume that Gov. Dean is a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, that's what. The only way to avoid such misperceptions is to keep a safe distance between us and voters who have yet to achieve an acceptable level of enlightenment.
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More:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0311090488nov09,1,6875485.column?coll=chi-news-colFor the record: The
Chicago Tribune is a traditionally middle-of-the-road Republican newspaper; that said, I agree with this columnist's take on this whole 'flap'.
:hi: