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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: portage who wrote (8198)	12/31/2003 1:10:49 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Neil Bush's Foreign Business Deals Draw Spotlight commondreams.org

To: portage who wrote (8198)	12/31/2003 3:14:57 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Dean will make GOP the majority party ________________________________ By DAVID E. JOHNSON The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/31/03 ajc.com Entering 2004, it appears that America is poised to have a defining election that will create a permanent Republican majority. Democrats appear likely to nominate Howard Dean, rather than someone like Dick Gephardt or Joe Lieberman or Wesley Clark who could present a stronger challenge to President Bush in the general election. In doing so, Democrats are also setting the direction that they want their party to follow -- the extreme left. Dean has stated again and again that his first objective is to take over the Democratic Party and return it to its roots. In doing so, he will part ways from Democrats such as Bill Clinton and Lieberman, who felt that Democrats need to veer to the center in elections and then govern from the left. Like another presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, Dean's first objective is his party's machinery. But unlike Goldwater, Dean is wrong on what the American people want. From the 1952 election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Americans have been turning more conservative. Goldwater's ideas were right on target with millions of Americans, but he was shot down by his own misstatements and by liberals in his own party who thought imitating Democrats was the way to victory. The subsequent elections of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush demonstrate the resonance of Goldwater's ideas. Dean's ideas, on the other hand, are not popular with a majority of the American voters or even a majority of Democrats. But under the arcane nominating rules, Dean will most likely be the Democratic nominee. Sensing this, Al Gore recently rushed to endorse Dean. In doing so, Gore hoped to imitate Nixon. Nixon knew Goldwater would lose in 1964. But Nixon realized that Goldwater's overall philosophy was a winner, so he supported Goldwater wholeheartedly, hoping to inherit his support in 1968 and with that the presidency. Gore believes that the same will happen to him. But Gore is miscalculating. The country is more conservative and grows more so daily. Gore and Dean are out of touch with a majority of Americans with their support for same-sex marriages. In foreign policy, they resemble Neville Chamberlain more so than Harry Truman. And by backing them, the Democrats are consigning themselves to minority status for the long term. The 2004 presidential race will be a defining election in American politics, akin to that of Franklin Roosevelt's in 1936 that truly established the Democrats as a majority party. Key groups that can make up a new Republican majority are forming. Jewish-Americans, long a stalwart of the Democrats, are ready to vote Republican over what they see as not only Dean's but the Democratic Party's abandonment of Israel. Hispanics have also shown, most recently in the California recall, that they will vote Republican. Finally, Democrats are writing off an entire section of the country -- the South. The Dean nomination will be the final action needed to set off the Republican majority at all levels. Dean is not a godsend to Republicans; he is the defining moment that Republicans have needed to become the majority party. --David E. Johnson is the CEO of Strategic Vision LLC, an Atlanta-based public relations and public affairs company.