Civil Rigths Advocate: Stand Firm Howard Dean

Editorial in LA Times by Constance L. Rice, a Civil Rights Attorney:
Howard Dean wants to represent angry white Confederate flag-wavers. He even quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. in doing so. And in a televised debate Tuesday he refused to say he was sorry for starting this tempest.

Well, Dr. Dean, you may have clumsily launched this issue, but keep at it and keep quoting, because you're right.

No, this is not a missive from a Southern rebel driving a Confederate flag-festooned F-150 halfton to a Civil War reenactment. It's from the great-granddaughter of slaves--and slave owners. A civil rights lawyer, no less, who knows full well the toxic pain and pride tangled in all symbols of the slavocracy known as Dixie...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rice6nov06,1,7780769.story?

Why is Dean and everyone spinning his remark to be an "effort to discuss race relations" when the article was CLEARLY about Dean's support of the NRA and its positions on gun control?

 
http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/22649906.html
Kerry criticizes Dean's gun views
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Register Staff Writer
11/01/2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, said Dean's opposition to an assault weapons ban in 1992, recorded in a National Rifle Association endorsement questionnaire, contradicts his position as a presidential candidate supporting a federal assault weapons ban.

Kerry supported the 1994 bill that outlawed the sale and ownership of assault weapons, which Dean says he now supports.

"Howard Dean, during the time we were trying to pass it, was appealing to the NRA for their support," Kerry said, while visiting a rural Story County farm.
"We don't need to be a party that says we need to be the candidacy of the NRA. We stand up against that."

Dean has said 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore lost the election because he failed to win Southern states, where disaffected Democrats who favor gun owners' rights were reluctant to support him.

"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Dean said Friday in a telephone interview from New Hampshire. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats."

Dean said he answered the questionnaire while running for re-election as governor of Vermont. He has said he was never asked to sign a gun control bill during his Vermont tenure.
>>>>>>>

Really.

Notwithstanding your obvious hatred for Dean, the fact is that he has been using this metaphor for almost a year now. It's about bringing back those who have left this party because of race, guns, right to choose, fundamentalism and bigotry. The wedge issues that rethugs have sucessfully used for years. ALL of the candidates should be talking about this every day.

You are the one spinning.

I think you can find a better theme.

Breaks a few taboos, attacks the current divide-and-rule
strategy, and well written too.

The early bird posts first...:-)

See:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=19918

locking
rfu, moderator