DeLay swats at Dean

A day after Dean questioned Ashcroft's patriotism, DeLay, a Republican lawmaker from Sugar Land, fired off a statement calling the former Vermont governor a "a cruel and extremist demagogue."

"If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democratic crop, next November's going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker," DeLay said in a reference to President Reagan's landslide victory over Walter Mondale.

The DeLay outburst prompted a response by the Dean campaign in Burlington, Vt.

Tricia Enright, the Dean for America communications director, said the ideological agenda of the DeLay-Ashcroft "wing of the Republican Party threatens basic American freedoms that have been enshrined in the Constitution for over 200 years."

"Those policies are not only extreme, they are cruel," Enright said.

Privately, the Dean campaign was gleeful about the DeLay attack on their candidate.

A "Stop Ashcroft" petition that garnered 60,000 signatures earlier this year was re-posted on the Dean Web site (www.deanforamerica.com).

The Dean campaign anticipates a surge in signatures on the petition that accuses Ashcroft of using "fear and inflammatory rhetoric to divide us."

El - Is the correct response my cruel and extremist demagogue can beat your cruel and extremist demagogue? Like all bullies, the GOP can dish it out but can't take it. I have to think the neocons by their fear of the world and their willingness to trade liberty for security show their true cowardliness. A bunch of small boys clutching for their guns and their mommies