Earnest style gets Edwards traction in Iowa (Oliphant - Boston Globe)

[chimpymustgo]

By Thomas Oliphant, 1/11/2004

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa

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When he started a year or so ago, the North Carolina senator was advocating a prescient batch of sensible proposals to shore up family economic life in wrapping paper that targeted the influence of special interests, not merely George Bush and never any of his Democratic opponents as the obstacle to progress.

Still is. What's different in the days before Iowa begins the choosing process is that the other candidates have caught on. Suddenly, the wounded, fragile condition of ordinary households is all the rage in the nomination contest. Since this is among Democrats you have to wonder what took them so long to grasp what Edwards grasped a long time ago.

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He deserves the compliments, and he continues to earn them. Last week, he put out a new booklet in New Hampshire, showing how important it is to families to combine tax relief with other incentives to increase savings; he also unfurled a new umbrella here over his proposal to curb the influence of lobbyists and other narrowly focused big shots in Washington by making it harder for them to spread their money and weight around. You have to agree, as he says, that it's hardly an accident that a seven-figure coupon-clipper pays a lower federal tax rate than his secretary.

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He led his opponents into proposing ways to make public universities financially accessible to all kids willing to work. He alone would have the government match every dollar a family can sock away as savings (up to a grand a year). And he was among the first to draw the line at ordinary Americans' tax cuts in advocating repeal of the breaks legislated under Bush for those making more than $200,000 -- an issue finally getting into the headlines because Howard Dean's repeal-it-all economics left out the people Edwards never forgets.

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Not bad for a rookie. If the voters here give him a break, and he's still alive after the voting on Feb. 3, watch out. The horse race syndrome of modern media politics is not kind to those who advocate more than they attack, but it is no accident that the rest of the field, even Dean, have begun to ape Edwards's relentless focus on paycheck-dependent Americans.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is [e-mail].
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/11/earnest_style_gets_edwards_traction_in_iowa/

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Wonderful article - I had a very tough time editing it down. Please read. Take another look at John Edwards.

[spooky3]

1. This is great, thanks!