Friday, July 11, 2003
Reed's Right 'Rithmetic http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/10/ip.00.html
CROWLEY: Let me ask you. There's a ... memo out recently that said, boy, Republicans really ought to run against Howard Dean. He'd be the perfect candidate to run against. Do you agree?
REED: Well, I don't really think that way. I really...
CROWLEY: There's nobody you'd rather run against than...
REED: Not really. I think you can get in a lot of trouble in politics trying to pick your opponents.
CROWLEY: I think you can, too, but we wanted to try anyway.
REED: I can remember when the Democrats were sort of, you know wrapping their hands together in anticipation of running against Ronald Reagan, and then they lost 43 states, as I recall.
Thanks, Ralph. From your lips to God's ears. Keep up the good work. Comments?
UPDATE NOTE: After reading some of your comments, a quick clarification on the Dean-as-Reagan meme. The comparison of Dean to Reagan is largely political and in no way reflects on policy or personal characteristics. To wit:
Reagan lead a conservative Republican insurgency during the primary that pundits said made him unelectable in the general. Moderates clutched their worry beads and fretted about "another Barry Goldwater."
Democrats were giddy and lulled into an "unbeatable" complacency. Yet, time and time again, Reagan surprised and confounded his critics, outmaneuvering them at every turn.
He was demeaned and dismissed by his foes, including Poppy Bush, and the attacks only seemed to make him stronger.
His core supporters would stop at nothing, and ultimately, he presided over a great political reallignment that we as Democrats are still battling today.
He did this by first -- you guessed it -- shoring up the base in his party and letting them know that their ideas and their voices counted, that they should be proud of their party again, and that they could make a difference.
Sound familiar?
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Nation-Building was founded by Aziz Poonawalla in August 2002 under the name Dean Nation. Dean Nation was the very first weblog devoted to a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and became the vanguard of the Dean netroot phenomenon, raising over $40,000 for the Dean campaign, pioneering the use of Meetup, and enjoying the attention of the campaign itself, with Joe Trippi a regular reader (and sometime commentor). Howard Dean himself even left a comment once. Dean Nation was a group weblog effort and counts among its alumni many of the progressive blogsphere's leading talent including Jerome Armstrong, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. After the election in 2004, the blog refocused onto the theme of "purple politics", formally changing its name to Nation-Building in June 2006. The primary focus of the blog is on articulating purple-state policy at home and pragmatic liberal interventionism abroad.
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