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"Centrists" want democrats to become 'Party of War'
The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to "real fights" within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism. In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean "to do no harm," the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is "a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections..." Their criticism has been heard many times during the past two decades in their continuing battle against the party's liberal establishment. But this time, they say, it will take a divisive, all-out political civil war to scrub the anti-war orthodoxy out of the party's agenda... Although they acknowledged that for many anti-war Democrats "Iraq remains a difficult issue," they said, "It is essential that partisan enmity not obscure America's vital interest in helping the newly elected Iraqi government succeed." But party liberals last week dismissed the DLC's advice as warmed-over Republicanism. "I can't tell the difference between the positions the DLC puts forward and Republican policy," said Jack Blum, counsel for the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. "I've read this before and I am not carried away by it. Nobody in the Democratic Party, and that most especially includes the liberals in the Americans for Democratic Action, opposes fighting the terrorists." "...fighting *for* the terrorists." Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-04-04 |
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