Club for Hypocrisy

It may be a month-and-a-half before the Iowa caucus, but it increasingly seems the Bush vs. Dean general election battle has begun.

Today, the so-called Club for Growth unveiled an ad for Iowa and New Hampshire that accuses Howard Dean of saying -- yes, actually saying! -- that he will raise taxes on the average family by $1,933 a year.

Dean, of course, has said nothing of the sort. He has said he'd roll back Bush's tax cuts -- and he's consistently and compellingly argued that since Bush's tax cuts forced higher state and local taxes and college tuition hikes, they've been more of a tax shift than true tax relief.

What makes the Club for Plutocracy's ad especially galling, however, is that just two months ago, club president Stephen Moore wrote an article in The Weekly Standard in which he had this to say about a Dean appearance before the libertarian Cato Institute:

Dean charmed nearly everyone in the boardroom. He came across as erudite, policy savvy, and, believe it or not, a friend of free markets--at least by the standards of the Tom Daschle-Dick Gephardt axis of the Democratic party. Even when challenged on issues like environmentalism, where he favored a large centralized mass of intrusive regulations, Dean remained affable.

"You folks at Cato," he told us, "should really like my views because I'm economically conservative and socially laissez-faire." Then he continued: "Believe me, I'm no big-government liberal. I believe in balanced budgets, markets, and deregulation. Look at my record in Vermont." He was scathing in his indictment of the "hyper-enthusiasm for taxes" among Democrats in Washington.

He left--and I will never forget the nearly hypnotic reaction. The charismatic doctor had made believers of several hardened cynics. Nearly everyone agreed that we had finally found a Democrat we could work with. Since then, I've watched Dean's career with more than a little interest and we chat from time to time on the phone.

I just sent Moore the following email:

The Club for Growth says it is for limited government. Then what is it doing supporting George Bush's credit-card economics instead of the fiscal conservativism of Howard Dean?

Just wondering. A half-million (and counting) Dean supporters are going to counter your every move, and we will indeed be George W. Bush's worst nightmare -- but a wide-awake dream of democratic renewal for the rest of America.

Want to send your own message to Stephen Moore? Click here.

Comments

[Bobcat Dave]

Right. The Cato Institute--via their Web site and an interview on NPR--recently RAGGED Bush for being a bigger spender than any recent president, Democrat or otherwise. If Democrats are "tax and spend" the Republicans just jump right to the "spend."