WA: Howard Dean a GOP Threat?

You've got to hand it to Reed Davis, former senatorial candidate from Washington State, he's certainly not afraid to give his own side a kick in the pants when needed.

Will anyone listen? Probably not, no more than they took my first-hand warning about Harry Reid to heart.

Is Howard Dean a potential menace? Davis gives three big reasons why and backs them up with details.

I like Davis's take here because it's clear Republicans are already becoming very complacent about their majority status. As usual, conservatives underestimate how hard the left will work to regain power. Ignore at your peril:


(Seattle Times)

NOW that Howard Dean has ascended to the chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee, Republicans are high-fiving one another with such mad glee that you'd think Democrats had just nominated Dennis Kucinich to run in 2008. The GOP needs to sit back down, recork the champagne and get back to work. Whether they know it or not, Republicans need to understand that Dean spells trouble for the Republican Party. Big trouble.

Republicans may think that the nomination of Dean is hysterically funny — a scream, in fact, as George Will recently put it — but they are deluding themselves if they think Dean is nothing more than a wild-eyed ideologue with a temper and a cult following.

Dean brings three talents to the chairmanship that can potentially sink not just a GOP presidential candidate in 2008 but the Republican-controlled House and maybe even the Senate well before then.

First, he's a fund-raiser par excellence. Lest we Republicans forget, not only did Howard Dean set records for fund raising, he set them in one of the most imaginative, difficult and unorthodox ways imaginable — namely, through the Internet. And remember, he set those records not by initially tapping the big-money crowd but by combing through the grass roots for nickels and dimes.