Rehabilitating Chairman How

I speculated recently that at least one possible reason behind the seemingly uncontrollably incendiary partisan rhetoric of DNC Chairman Howie Dean was that he was serving as a triangulation point off of which for other elected Democrats to contrast themselves as (comparatively) mainstream and even {snicker} "moderate."

Joe Biden, his former colleague Opie Edwards, and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson were the first wave. They soon had braying company.

Crazy Nancy Pelosi:

Talking with reporters on Wednesday [June 8th], House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she did not agree with Dean's comments the day before, when he said the Republican Party is made up mostly of white Christians.

"I don't think that the statement the governor [Dean] made was a helpful
statement," Pelosi said, in quotes picked up by The Associated Press.

The top Democrat tried to put the best face possible on her party's one-man human gaffe machine.

"The role of the chair of the Democratic National Committee is one that is different than the role of the Democratic leader of the House or in the Senate," Pelosi said. "And sometimes the exuberance of that position results in statements that neither of us would make."

"Listen," she explained. "Any one of us at any given time will make a statement that we may, in retrospect, say maybe that was a little over-enthusiastic. And I can put that statement in that category for Governor Dean."

Barack Obama:

Senator Barack Obama, D-IL, criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean Wednesday night for using "religion to divide."

Obama told reporters gathered at the Rock the Vote awards dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., that Dean needs to tone down his rhetoric. Dean said on Monday that the Republican Party was "pretty much a white, Christian party."

"As somebody who is a Christian myself, I don't like it when people use religion to divide, whether that is Republican or Democrat," Obama said. "I think in terms of his role as party spokesman, [Dean] probably needs to be a little more careful and I suspect that is a message he is going to be getting from a number of us," Obama explained.

"We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language," he added.

Even that master of rhetorical restraint, Terry "Punk" McAuliffe:

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe criticized his successor, Howard Dean, on Wednesday, saying that he should stop launching personal attacks on Republicans and "always keep it to the issues."

Asked what advice he had for Dean, McAuliffe told Fox News Radio's Tony Snow: "I just think that sometimes you have to be, obviously, careful about how you say things."

The ex-DNC chief added, "I was one of the most partisan chairman ever, but you know what? I never made it personal."

But, of course, besides the fact that he's being out-fundraised by RNC counterpart Ken Mehlman by a three-to-one margin and is single-handedly disemboweling the public image of the Democrat Party, they all think he's doing a "great job."

So it was with more than a little curiosity that I read of Dean's "woodshed" session on Capitol Hill last week, where he was told to "tone down the rhetoric," "hire some speechwriters and stick to the script." The curiosity folded itself over into wonderment with the press conference that followed.

Harry Reid tried to claim that Dean had just spent the past few months "misspeaking":

I think that all of you know that there isn't a single person, whether it's any of us in this room, or Governor Dean, or Mehlman, that hasn't misspoken. We're here today to talk about the American people. We're talking about common sense reform with issues they care about.

Of course, if that were so then Dr. Demented wouldn't have been selected as DNC chair to begin with, and they'd be jettisoning him as fast as humanly possible now. That they did and aren't is reflective of the mentality that can rationalize relentless hate rhetoric about "white Christians" and such as "fiddling when he should have been faddling."

If Dirty Harry's excuse was lame, his deputy, Dick Durbin (oh, what an act of ironic foreshadowing this was...) rode that current into the rarified ether of defiant, paranoid incoherence:

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed "the right wing" and elements of the press "in service to it" for repeating Howard Dean's remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion.

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Got that? It's Hillary Clinton's "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" conspiring with the evil "corporate media" to "take [Dean's] comments out of context" in their "desire to have some kind of a controversy, so they don't give the message of Howard Dean," as Barbara Boxer helpfully encapsulated. As if the "message of Howard Dean" isn't exactly what has drawn him, and his party, all this unwanted attention:

Mr. Dean, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee four months ago, has caused a stir with a string of public statements that he "hates the Republican Party and everything it stands for" and that its members are "liars," "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead." ...

In February, he told the Congressional Black Caucus that the Republican Party "couldn't get this many people of color in a single room" unless "they had the hotel staff in here." And on Monday told a gathering of California journalists that the Republican "party is basically a white, Christian party."

And don't forget his charge that no Republican has ever "worked an honest day in their lives."

It would be so much easier and helpfully symbolic for Democrats to simply axe Dean and replace him with somebody who can mask his/her extremism with a modicum of verbal discretion. But then Hillary Clinton is running for president, and Mr. Bill wants to run the UN. And no other Dem would have the prestige to sound responsible and not alienate the Sorosian/Frankenoid/Moore-on fringe that calls that party's shots.

With all of the above established as context, Senator Durbin's outburst this week, and House Donks' political masturbation session the other day, start to make a bit more sense.

One could ask, I suppose, how the rest of the Democrat leadership making itself look even more seditious, bigoted, and all-around whacked than their party chairman will help rehabilitate his public image, much less that of the party itself. But that would be to apply reason and logic to a crowd that abandoned all ties to reality - and any hope of regaining national majority status - in the throes of Sunshine State agony four and a half years ago.

Wherever rock bottom is for these people, they appear to still have some depths to plumb before the reach it.

How ducky that the rest of us are along for the ride.

It's almost enough to make one scream....