Fight brewing over Dean for DNC Chair

what a surprise...

Democratic moderates are gearing up to mount a campaign to block a former presidential candidate, Howard Dean, from succeeding Terence McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, arguing that his election to the top post would prevent the party from moving to the political center.

Look, I've been arguing for a Purple State approach myself, but the "political center" that the supposed "Democratic moderates" are speaking about is not a true synthesis of ideas from left and right, but rather Republican-lite. Look at the evidence:

Speaking on CNN, an outgoing Democratic senator from Louisiana, John Breaux, warned that Dr. Dean is the wrong man for the job. "We're going to have to move to the center," Mr. Breaux said.

"There's nothing wrong with that," he added. "We can keep the base in by having good, solid Democratic ideas. But you'd better know how to expand them. Otherwise you're going to be a party that loses elections. We've lost three in a row now. And I think moving to the center is where the answer is."
[...]
Southern Democrats are also pushing former Rep. Brad Carson of Oklahoma, who lost a Senate bid last week to Republican Tom Coburn. Mr. Carson, who received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, ran as a moderate.

While acknowledging that he would be a longshot, the chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, Jay Parmley, said Mr. Carson is exactly the kind of politician the national party should be turning to. "We need a moderate and a conservative to lead us into the midterm elections," he said.

Carson himself says it's unlikely, but the point here is that the Democrats are explicitly thinking they need to be conservative to win the South. That, despite the fact that more people voted for Kerry in Texas than any other state besides New York and California.

The Democrats basically want to try to continue playing the Red Blue game, and are willing to abandon their certitude to do it. It's clear that Dean's approach, unbashedly liberal and unafraid to make the argument that liberalism is worth being proud of, in blue or red territory, is the only way that the Democrats can really reinvent themselves successfully. Anything else will just be another failed excuse.

UPDATE: ABC News has more on this. A possible Rosenberg/Dean combination? Intriguing.. Rosenberg's NDN network was just as innovative, and visionary, as Dean's campaign, with respect to Hispanic outreach. The list of challenges that the new DNC Chair will face seems almost tailored for Dean's skills and leadership, too.