The Political Spectrum

A few weeks before the Iowa caucus National Review ran a cover of a screaming Howard Dean, the headline reading "Please Nominate This Man." Unfortunately Howard Dean finished a disappointing third in the caucus, gave the "I have a scream" speech, and his presidential bid was shot down. But while the Democratic Party averted disaster and bypassed Dean for the more "electable" John Kerry, the Party made up for its momentary bout with sanity in order to annoint Dean as its National party chairman. And a cry went up among the exultant Republicans, sounding something like "Hallelujah."

Dean has failed to disappoint those of us on the right who expected the Deanster to provide numerous hysterical soundbites that would only serve to make the Democrats appear even more outside the mainstream. I have failed to commment on Dean's silliness thus far because to document every idiotic thing the man has said this year really would require me to become a fulltime blogger.

But today CSPAN aired Chairman Dean's speech before the Campaign For America's Future 'Take Back America Conference.' Let's delve into the madness that is Mr. Dean.

i want to start by talking about pensions. pensions and social security. when the president, the president rules by polls. he doesn't care that much about issues. he looks at the polls and he drives the agenda based on the polls. and the polls told him that he could get away with privatizing social security, if he told older people, i'm now in that category, having passed 55. but if he told older folks that we're going to be ok. then the 20-year-olds and the 30-year-olds would sign right up. they made a fundamental mistake by assuming 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds were dumb. they thought the 20 and 30-year-olds wouldn't notice that the bill was $30 million added on to the deficit and they were going to sacrifice their own kids' ability to go to college, if that's what they did. and it wasn't enough for the president to try to wreck the public pension system that we had. it wasn't enough for him to try to turn over social security to the same people who brought us enron, his good friends and political contributors. that wasn't enough.

Let me get this straight. The man who leads a party that is home to Bill Clinton has the audacity to claim that Bush "rules by polls." Is this supposed to be some sort of joke? As for the rest of this section, I have sent it to the good folks over at NASA in order to ascertain what it is he was actually trying to say. Perhaps years from now a wiser race of people will appear on this Earth and be able to comprehend this inanity, but I fear we will have long perished from this mortal coil.

I used to say in the campaign, i meant this sincerely. i would rather have you go out and vote, even if you vote republican, than stay home. i really would. if we're going to have a democracy, and lord knows this administration is beginning to erode the core our democracy, the great genius of american democracy, there are a lot of democracies in the world. the great genius of american democracies is that if 48% of you vote one way, you still have some say about the government. now they're trying to eliminate that.

Astounding. This man earnestly believes that Republicans do not believe in democracy, yet we're supposed to believe that somehow Republicans are to blame for the breakdown in political discourse.

the protection of the minority is an important principle in america. for those 48%, that didn't vote for president bush, the constitution says we still have some say.

Oh yeah, I remember that article of the Constitution that says that. It's Article 8, right? Seriously, Dean goes on and on about the supposed destruction of the filibuster and how that undermines minority rights. I guess then that Dean would have been applauding as racist southern Democrats filibustered the civil rights legislation of the 60's. You know, minority rights and all.

you think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? well republicans, i guess can do that. because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives. but for ordinary working people who have to work eight hour as day, they have kids, they've got to get home to the kids

This is perhaps the dumbest thing ever said by one of America's dumbest politicians. Chutzpah. Pure chutzpah. Yeah, I remember lounging around last year on election day, sipping my single malt scotch by the pool, motivating myself to vote after some time in order to pull the lever for my favorite Republican. Luckily Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, Matt Damon, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Alec Baldwin, Steven Bing, and so many other left-wingers were able to take time out of their laborious 9-to-5 jobs just in time to vote. Because we all know Republicans are the lazy ones who never have had to work a hard day in our lives.

But if that is the case, and over 60,000,000 people voted Republican in the last election, then isn't that a sign that our Nation is in much better shape than we ever imagined? I mean if the country can boast of 60 million independently wealthy individuals, what exactly are we worried about? But then again I wouldn't expect Mr. Dean to know all that much about inherited wealth, because it's not as though he grew up in the lap of luxery, right?

I'm going to put this simply: Howard Dean is an idiot. He is in reality what Democrats have accused George Bush of being, and that is an intellectual lightweight who cannot formulate a cogent thought without slipping into half-baked cliches and paranoid conspiracy theories. He is possibly the dumbest politician in America, and that is saying a lot.

To my left-leaning friends: honestly, is this the guy you want leading your party out of the electoral wilderness?