Alterman's take on Bush and the Dems' war against Dean.

[madfloridian]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040112&s=alterman
Interesting take on the attacks:
SNIP..."Saddam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"--and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance. New Republic writer Michelle Cottle returned from maternity leave to find Washington fit for a "Tarantino-style blood bath," with the Democratic front-runner cast as a "paleoliberal...a heartless conservative...too naïve to beat Bush...too politically cynical to trust...a Stalinist... a neofascist kills babies and drinks their blood."

And I loved this paragraph about Bush and his inability to determine a distinct threat:

SNIP..."Dean has some problems, no doubt, but the pundits hardly seem to notice that George W. ("You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror") Bush cannot pretend to defend deceiving the nation into war anymore. When ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed him in an interview about whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or merely would have liked to have them, Bush replied contemptuously, "What's the difference?" (Try this, Mr. President: "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he pointed a gun at me and was about to pull the trigger," or "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he looked like he was thinking about getting a gun.")

[La_Serpiente]

1. this part made me laugh

Another part of the problem is that punditocracy poster boy Joe Lieberman is currently more likely to get the Republican nomination than the Democratic one--and more deserving as well. Dean is being punished, in part, for cleaning Joe's clock. Kurtz speaks for fellow Lieberman lovers when he insists, sans evidence, that "Dean and the war's opponents have not yet come up with a convincing argument that the status quo would have been preferable."

[madfloridian]

3. "Dean is being punished, in part, for cleaning Joe's clock. "

This is a large part of it.

Love your alert! Hope we don't get to Elmo.
:silly:

[edzontar]

2. Alterman gets it right--again!!!

Washington fears Dean almost as much as some of the folks here.


Save us, oh save us, General Clark!!!

[Scott Lee]

4. Democratic Statism and GOP conservatism - bedfellows.

Alterman connects the dots in a puzzle that's easy for all to see. Dean's candidacy is a direct threat to business as usual, that when the rubber meets the road, amounts to barely a dimes worth of difference between Washington Dem insiders and Washington Repub insiders. Two heads of the same snake.

[madfloridian]

5. Yep, that is just what it is about.

When Dean used the word re-regulate, they went into shock.

Can you say Mad Cow disease? They have been cutting back inspections for years to save money. Can you say a media full of spin?

[BootinUp]

7. Why is it necessary to twist this

The debate has nothing to do with fearing Dean. It is about defeating Bush. Lets try to stay on point. If I thought Dean was the best shot I would be one of his strongest supporters.

And I don't give a hill of beans about the outsider insider bullshit argument, I care about winning elections.

[madfloridian]

6. I thought this was interesting.

SNIP..."ABC's Sam Donaldson made the same silly point, admitting that "in context, you know what he's saying," but when normally perspicacious pundits like Miller and Chait talk in terms of "feelings" and "vibes," something more than policy disputes are at work. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's walking conflict of interest and barometer of conventional wisdom-- named by the American Conservative Union as one of the most reliable reporters--offers up a clue to the journalistic zeitgeist when he complains of Dean, "Reporters who have spent hours with Dean express surprise that he never asks a single question about them." (Would Kurtz feel better if Dean said, "So, Howie, does CNN pay you more to report on the Post or does the Post pay you more to report on CNN?")..."