“Rah rah rah, let me hear your battle cry!” Howard Dean’s rallying song sounded for his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
As of now, he is steamrolling the competition for the job which includes a left-of-center former congressman from Texas, a former Congressman and 9/11 commission member who is a pro-life Midwesterner and a plethora of other party activists.
He is seeking to ignite the liberal faithful in the party because, as he sees it, we don’t need two Republican parties. He is even picking up support among many Southern party leaders like Mississippi’s Democratic Chairman Wayne Dowdy.
After Dowdy announced his support for Dean, Republicans in the state offered him an old phone booth because it was said that back in the ’60s and ’70s, there were so few Republicans in Mississippi that they could all meet in a phone booth.
Dowdy, along with Dean, are going to assure that in a few years, Mississippi’s Democrats will be able to meet in that same phone booth.
Dean has been a major propagator of the red state-blue state hoopla. He and other Democratic activists claim that if only 60,000 votes had gone the other way in Ohio, John Kerry would be president.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda, but didn’t.
If 6,000 more voters in Wisconsin had voted for Bush, he could have won without Ohio. If 5,000 more voters in New Hampshire had voted the other way, Bush would have carried that state. If 34,000 voters in Oregon had switched, Bush would have carried that state.
All I have to say to these Democrats is “move on.”
Dean’s biggest fallacy is his belief that in order to win elections, the Democrats have to convince whites in the South that they are voting against their economic interests when they pull the lever for Republicans.
Ted Rall, a liberal cartoonist and opinion writer, likes to frequently sound off against what he calls “trailer park Republicanism.”
The way he writes, one would think that whites who vote Republican in the South are all trailer trash, gay hating, unemployed yokels who live in wastelands called Mississippi and Alabama where the atmosphere is reminiscent of the Great Depression.
Howard Dean has gone across the nation telling people in not so explicit terms of white Southerners’ stupidity while simultaneously appealing for their votes. He told a crowd in Tallahassee that Southerners have to quit basing their votes on “race, guns, God and gays.”
Excuse me? What’s wrong with the priorities of God, family and country? How can you ask a religious person to put his or her belief in secular things instead of God? According to tradition and the Bible, that would be a sin for a faithful person.
As Rall and many of my Southern Democratic friends like to point out, for every dollar Mississippi pays in taxes, we get $1.84 back in federal money.
Democratic blue state dwellers have complained that they are so tired of feeding us Republican red state pigs at the trough with their federal dollars.
In 2004, 45 percent of Californians voted for Bush for president. During that same year, 40 percent of New Yorkers and 49 percent of Pennsylvanians voted for Bush.
The liberals seem to forget that there are a lot of Republicans in the blue state country who pay federal taxes for their Republican brethren in the red states. I’ll take their money.
Furthermore, if you examine who is actually getting the majority of the appropriations in Mississippi, I would say the Democrats are getting a return on their investment.
Taking a look at the Mississippi congressional map, the 2nd District, Mississippi’s poorest area which includes Jackson and the Delta, is by far the biggest recipient of federal money.
Who did the 2nd District overwhelmingly vote for? John Kerry.
Mississippi’s richest districts, which are much less dependent on federal funds, are the 1st (North Mississippi) and the 4th (the Coast).
Who did they overwhelmingly vote for? George W. Bush.
Some say, “What about those Republican farmers receiving the agriculture subsidies?” Most farming today is done by big companies, and I would have to say companies that vote for whoever protects their agriculture money, Republican or Democrat.
Last time I checked, Republican Thad Cochran sponsored the agriculture bill, subsidies included, and George W. Bush signed it.
Howard Dean needs to get a new Southern message, or the Mississippi Democrats might just need to lock him up in that phone booth the Mississippi Republicans use to inhabit in the ’60s and ’70s.
Edward Sanders is a junior political science major. He can be reached at [email protected].