LIBERALS IN FEEDING FRENZY---TARGET IS DEAN

"Coulterizing" Dean, the long knives are out. Starting with, or maybe including, the WaPo today.

Dean 2004 Web site trumpeted the rollout of the governor's ostensibly tough-minded foreign policy team with the admonition, "McGovernize This!" -- a request, alas, that anyone who bears the slightest familiarity with the writings of its members could all too easily oblige. Which is the burden those who reject the McGovern caricature must bear: In Dean's case, the caricature happens to be substantially true.

The WaPo goes on to explain that Dean IS another McGovern in that his anti-War views go much farther than just Iraq.

Yet, just as the foreign policy positions McGovern touted as a candidate obscured his earlier service as a bomber pilot and his votes in favor of military action in Vietnam, so too do the actual positions of candidate Dean rightly count for more than the foreign policy inclinations of Gov. Dean. And, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, candidate Dean's critique of America's global role has been no more confined to Iraq than McGovern's was to Vietnam. The White House contender's promise to seek "permission" from the international community before resorting to force, his refusal to "prejudge" Osama bin Laden, his pledge to "tear up the Bush Doctrine," his (subsequently withdrawn) demand that U.S. troops in Iraq "need to come home," his broadsides against the more hawkish members of the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party" -- is it really necessary to point out the echoes of McGovern in this litany?

It is a very good read, keeping in mind that the lazy press corps is trying to stir up a contest that can sell papers, not really cover a campaign. Dean is drawing huge crowds. Huge.