{"id":1224,"date":"2004-02-10T11:38:11","date_gmt":"2004-02-10T16:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1224.html"},"modified":"2004-02-10T11:38:11","modified_gmt":"2004-02-10T16:38:11","slug":"ianotheri-flip-flop-dean-abandons-wisconsin-or-bust-pledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ianotheri-flip-flop-dean-abandons-wisconsin-or-bust-pledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Another<\/i> flip-flop: Dean abandons Wisconsin-or-bust pledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seemed like only a few days ago, Howard Dean was putting his whole presidential campaign on the line with a bold ultimatum. “The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin,” Dean told his supporters. “A win [in Wisconsin] will carry us to the big states of March 2 — and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race.”<\/p>\n

Oh wait, that was<\/i> only a few days ago.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Dean was already equivocating<\/a>. The email to supporters that bore his name, Dean said, was written by someone else. He added that the Wisconsin challenge was “a brilliant ploy.” When asked to describe what he meant by that, Dean said, “It depends what your definition of the word ‘ploy’ is.”<\/p>\n

Dean didn’t come right out and say, “We were just trying to manipulate our supporters into giving us a few bucks,” but he didn’t have to. Dean was effectively acknowledging that he was playing the same cynical political game that Washington politicians — the ones he claims to disdain — play all of the time.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Dean made it official<\/a>. He has abandoned his Wisconsin-or-bust pledge just four days after making it. Dean acknowledged that his new commitment to stay in the race even if he continues to lose is an “obvious contradiction” to the message he was using just four days ago.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to believe Dean was the same guy who told the LA Times on Jan. 31, 2003, “You can’t continue to change your positions back and forth. We can’t win with somebody who does that.”<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, he didn’t really try to defend himself. Dean used his manipulative “ploy,” his donors contributed, and now he feels emboldened to break his word on a whim.<\/p>\n

It’s as if the Dean campaign has gone from bold and rash to just plain annoying.
\n
\nIn explaining why he’s had a change of heart, Dean said, “There’s too many people who’ve come up to me and said whatever you do, ‘Don’t drop out.'”<\/p>\n

That’s it? Dean’s not going to drop out because his most loyal supporters think he shouldn’t? By that logic, no candidate would ever drop out before the convention, so long as they could find fans to tell him or her how great they are.<\/p>\n

This entire campaign tactic reminds me of a rock band who says “Thank you! Good night!” at the end of a concert even though they know they’ll be coming back for an encore or two. The band re-takes the stage and says, “So, you really wanted us back!” when the truth is, they just didn’t turn the lights back on so people could go home.<\/p>\n

Dean’s doing the same thing. He had no intention of withdrawing, but he told his most loyal fans that he was exiting the stage. When they responded to his “threat” to leave, Dean made it sound like “the people” convinced him to stay. Nonsense. As Dean himself described it, the whole approach was just a “brilliant ploy.”<\/p>\n

In fact, Dean’s entire new campaign message is a 180-degree turn from what the candidate was saying when he was leading the pack just a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n

“The media claims that this contest is over,” Dean told a Wisconsin audience yesterday. “They say that Wisconsin’s voice doesn’t count, that your votes don’t count. They expect you to rubber-stamp everybody else’s choice.”<\/p>\n

Funny, Dean wasn’t imploring voters to reject campaign hype when the media told everyone that Dean was going to be the nominee and everyone else should just give up. <\/p>\n

When the press noted that the candidate who raises the most money the year before the election always gets the nomination, Dean didn’t speak up to say, “Never mind that, the voters need to speak.” When Al Gore said the other candidates should “keep their eyes on the prize” and rally behind Dean, Dean didn’t stand up to contradict him. Indeed, Dean frequently told everyone that after he won Iowa and New Hampshire, it’d be practically impossible to stop him. He certainly wasn’t standing up for “Wisconsin’s voice” then. He all-but insisted that everyone “rubber stamp” the choice of the early primary\/caucus states.<\/p>\n

And now that someone else is the frontrunner, Dean is the champion for letting the process continue. What a shock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seemed like only a few days ago, Howard Dean was putting his whole presidential campaign on the line with a bold ultimatum. “The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin,” Dean told his supporters. “A win [in Wisconsin] will carry us to the big states of March 2 — and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}