Mother Jones Knows

Daily Mojo -- Howard Dean - Frontrunner?

For better or worse, then, Dean is no longer a dark horse. He has become a contender. And with his new status comes new danger. Suddenly, his critics are legion: Republicans and mainstream Democrats are demonizing him for his supposed radical liberal politics. Critics on the left, however, having looked at his intermittently progressive record, are wondering what all the fuss is about.

Additionally, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council -- which is tied to Connecticut Senator and presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman -- clearly views Dean as a threat, as it demonstrated in a sneering, now-infamous memo sent out in May.

"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home. That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one."

Dean's politics, though, bear little resemblance to those of the Democrats' most notorious losers. In fact, they look more like one of its most enduringly popular (albeit divisive) figures: Bill Clinton. While Dean is pro-choice and supports same-sex civil unions, he is pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and as hawkish on Iran and Israel as many of the neoconservatives running the White House today.

'He's really a classic Rockefeller Republican -- a fiscal conservative and social liberal,' according to University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson."

I don't think I would not go as far a labeling Dean any kind of Republican but he is 'a fiscal conservative and social liberal', just what this country needs now.