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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25721)	1/22/2004 3:51:04 PM
From: mistermj	Respond to of 793698

I thought your point was more in line with deep pocket donors.

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25721)	1/22/2004 3:55:24 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793698

So where in that link is the clear evidence that, as you stated, "Repubs just have lawyers more adept at manipulating the campaign contribution laws"? What laws are being manipulated per your link? Where are those Repub lawyers you spoke about?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25721)	1/22/2004 5:26:35 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793698

NEWS SUMMARY The Note would like to think that success in American politics is based to a large enough extent on substance that Howard Dean's 6-month run as the Democratic Party frontrunner couldn't be turned by one whooop-containing piece of video into the electoral equivalent of Pamela Ewing having dreamed the entire 9th season of "Dallas." But the tracking poll trends and overwhelming Gang of 500 CW suggest that tonight's monster doubleheader — the debate at 8 ET and the Doctors Dean world exclusive first joint broadcast interview with Diane Sawyer at 10 ET on ABC News' Primetime — just might be the last chance for Howard-powered Howard to get back in the hunt. The comparisons to Bill and Hill's post-Super Bowl "60 Minutes" interview in 1992 are as obvious as they are relevant. If Judith Steinberg can stand ("sit" actually) by her man in a way that recontextualizes him as a kindly New England doctor who wants to ride a grassroots wave to make fundamental change, perhaps Dean can turn this around. (Our crack technicians won't let a light fall of them, we promise.) Sawyer will conduct the interview this afternoon in Vermont. Watch for excepts beginning on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and on an ABC affiliate near you. Then see the whole thing on "Primetime" immediately following the debate. The lead-in audience on WMUR out of the debate broadcast should allow the Deans to reach quite a few Granite State voters. Of course, Dean is going to need a strong performance himself when he stands as part of the Surviving Seven (what Ken Mehlman and Jack Olvier think of as the new Seven Dwarfs … .) in the WMUR/ABC News/Union Leader/Fox News Channel event. Go St. Anselm! (And go ABC: surely you can't help but notice how ABC News is bringing you every major political news development today!) With Ambassador Moseley Braun's exit last week and Rep. Gephardt's departure from the field on Tuesday, this will be the first debate with a condensed field of seven: Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Clark, Lieberman, Kucinich, and Sharpton. The 90-minute debate will air live on WMUR-TV and FOX News Channel beginning at 8:00 pm ET. Extended excerpts will air on a one-hour special edition of ABC News' Nightline at 11:35 pm ET. FOX News Radio, ABC News Radio and ABC News Live will also carry the debate live. Fox News Channel's Brit Hume will serve as debate moderator in the opening portion of the debate. ABC News' Peter Jennings will moderate the latter portion of the debate and serve as the lead questioner on the panel that also includes WMUR-TV's Tom Griffith and John DiStaso of the Union Leader. Although Team Kerry doesn't want anyone to know (sssssshhhhh!!!), if their guy plays error-free ball tonight and for less than a week, this nomination fight narrative might be more about a Kerry glide path than it is about a wide-open scramble. And the current dynamics are playing to the advantage of Comeback Kerry. (As might an interview with … .tick, tick, tick, "60 Minutes" this Sunday.) Dean himself — playing political analyst — said it best yesterday in explaining why no one has tried to rip the face off the new frontrunner — yet. "The problem is when you go negative it drags you down," told an interviewer yesterday "Dick and I were running first and second and we ended up third and fourth. You've got to be very careful in a multi-candidate race." (In fact, that wasn't Dean's only turn as a political analyst yesterday — he told USA Today in an interview, that while "most debates are not important … .'this one is. A lot of people are going to be really focused on it.'") (In fact, Dean has already spent some time prepping for the debate, we are told, and has real, Dennett-Vogel-Buxton — certified debate prep time today!) (In fact, the Bush folks must be shaking their heads at how much the Dean high command — on the record and on background — are talking about tactics, changes, strategy, and efforts to re-make the candidate. No one has spotted Naomi Wolf in Burlington — yet — but can you imagine George W. Bush or even an adviser of his saying (as Dean himself did in the same USA Today interview) this: "I might as well go back to being who I really am.") (In fact, even in success, the Kerry campaign is no slouch in handing out that kind of process blind quote too!!) Dean's advisers seem to agree with the candidate.

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25721)	1/22/2004 5:32:51 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

A "Musical Interlude" for you, Ann. when in this world the headlines read of those whose hearts are filled with greed who rob and steal from those who need to right this wrong with blinding speed goes Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! speed of lightning, roar of thunder fighting all who rob or plunder Underdog. Underdog!

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25721)	1/22/2004 9:14:08 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793698

Here is a "snarling" columnist on the right. What Happened To Your Queer Party Friends? January 21, 2004 THE ENDLESS receding nightmare of the Iowa caucuses has finally produced something interesting: The Democrats have one hellacious catfight on their hands. After all the hoopla about Howard Dean's new mass movement of "Deaniacs," it appears that blanketing Iowa with self-righteous 20-year-olds in orange wool caps may not have been the ideal campaign strategy. Dean's distant third-place finish makes you want to ask him the question Jack Nicholson put to his down-and-out gay neighbor in "As Good As It Gets": "What happened to your queer party-friends?" At the behest of the Democratic Party establishment, the media dutifully destroyed Howard Dean, the legitimate leader of the opposition. Democratic voters are so obedient to the media, they followed their media puppet masters and instantly switched from Dean to John Kerry. But Dean still has the money and foot soldiers and endorsements to stay in the fight for the foreseeable future. And being from Vermont, Dean should do well in New Hampshire. I went to a public school, but if I remember my high school geography correctly, New Hampshire and Vermont are the same state. Until Kerry won Iowa, Wesley Clark was viewed as the pre-eminent electable Democrat principally because he's a Republican. Howard Dean has already said he believes Clark is a fine fellow but truly a Republican. In response, Gen. Clark immediately put on a third sweater. Sadly, it may turn out that Clark's whole raison d'etre is now gone. Never was so much money, media, chicanery, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, conniving and Cabala deployed to promote a quote-unquote "electable" Democrat. Clark was supposed to be the phony American to stop Dean, but Kerry is the even better phony American! And he's already stopped Dean in Iowa! Kerry and Clark now represent the two major wings of the Democratic Party -- the Kennedy wing and the Clinton wing. One drowns you after the extramarital affair; the other one calls you a stalker. Other than that, there isn't a hair's difference between any of the Democrats on any substantive issues. All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them favor Hillary's socialist health care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses -- and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantanamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills. All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! This is with the exception of Joe Lieberman who, as an observant Jew, is forbidden to backpedal after sundown on Fridays. Representing a large flabby chunk of the Kennedy wing, Ted Kennedy gave a speech last week in which he called the liberation of Iraq a "political product." Then again, Ted Kennedy calls Chivas Regal "that life-sustaining liquid." Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the secret burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about. For all his talk, even Dick Gephardt was willing to abandon blue-collar workers in a heartbeat. The Teamsters haven't asked for much, only two big votes in the past decade: (1) Oppose NAFTA, and (2) support drilling on a small, godforsaken patch of the Alaskan wilderness, as the people who actually live there have been begging us to do for decades. Like all the other Democrats, Gephardt voted against the Teamsters -- but with Barbra Streisand -- to oppose drilling in the godforsaken Alaskan wilderness. When Gephardt entered politics he was pro-life. But then, like Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich and scores of other Democrats with national ambitions, he quickly figured out that position wasn't, well ... viable. In short order he had adopted the whole NARAL party line. That's how you woo old-time union Democrats. On Monday night, Gephardt was shocked to discover that blue-collar Democrats have gone the way of patriotic Democrats: They're all Republicans now. (But thanks for that NAFTA vote a decade ago!) You knew Gephardt was toast when even responsible journalists have started using words like "decent" and "solid" to describe the two-faced weasel from Missouri. Though I suppose "decent" has a pretty broad meaning in a party that still admires Bill Clinton. The Iowa caucus was just another one of the Democrats' ongoing public debates about how to fake out the American people. Fifty percent of Iowa Democrats participating in the caucus said they "strongly disapprove" of the war with Iraq and another 25 percent "somewhat disapprove." But more important to Democrats than their pacifism was "electability." The entire Iowa electorate was committed to the proposition: How do we fool the neighbors? In the end, the caucus-goers chose a decorated war hero who voted in favor of the very war that 75 percent of them oppose. So much for the anti-war fever sweeping the country. The Democrats aren't even man enough to run a genuine coward for president.