Howard on Countdown

Written by: CorinneAM on Feb 19, 2009 11:00 PM EST

DVR is a good thing.  Fairly complete and mostly accurate transcript follows. 

Here's the setup: Four, possibly five, Republican governors--Palin, Jindal, Barber, Perry and Sanford (?)--have dreams of being on the Presidential ticket in 2012.  They are talking about not accepting money for projects in their state from the stimulus plan but state legislatures could override their plans. (Thanks Jim Clyburn!) They must take the money whether they like it or don't like, and have to learn to live with the fact that this stimulus is the best thing going.   However, they’re putting their own ambitions for 2012 ahead of their constituents’ needs.

 And look who's here, none other than Howard Dean!  (Sue me, I'm tired, LOL)

 First time in the studio with Keith, too.

 Q.  They know or should know they can be overruled by the states. Does that not make the political ambition contained in this obvious to almost anybody?

 A. People who are respected like Charlie Crist in Florida are going to take the money and the majority of Republicans will take the money.  It’s legit to talk about whether you want to take the money or not; it’s not legitimate in the middle of the biggest fiscal crisis to tell your people that their taxes are going up because you refuse on political grounds is nonsense.  This is nonsense.

Q.  I’m fascinated by Governor Crist’s response because not only is he taking the money but he introduced President Obama in Florida to talk about this plan.  And he is now talking about additional money and additional waivers that would allow him to get more money out of the stimulus, more money out of the federal government.  Who rewards him politically in this polarized time because obviously Republicans will come after him…

 A.  The voters will reward him.  There’s something –it’s interesting that these 5 governors are doing this.  When I was governor, which was for a long time, and also chairman of the governors’ association, governors are much more bipartisan than congresspeople.  When you’re a governor, most of the reasonable solutions are to have a middle some place and you have to do something.  This kind of posturing is unusual for governors and you don’t usually see it –you usually see Republican and Democratic governors pretty much on the same page.

 Q.  Well how does it work in Louisiana particularly in that sense which is still requiring as much aid as we can give them on a national level.  Bobby Jindal’s position-- is that from not having been there long enough?

 A. Keith, this is just politics.  That’s all it is.  And it’s a bad time for politics.  I think one of the messages of President Obama is “can’t we put this politics aside?” Barack Obama is in the White House today because his message was the younger generation’s message to my generation, which is “please stop fighting about all this stuff and get something done where we can all agree.”  And the Republican party hasn’t gotten that yet.  Not one of them voted for the stimulus package in the House, only 3 voted for it in the Senate. The tactic is the same tactic they used in 1994 against Bill Clinton.  It is not going to work.  We have a different electorate; they are fed up with this.  They’ve seen what happens when you behave like that and they’re not going to put up with it.  I think the Republican party is making a huge mistake, and I think these 5 governors are making a big mistake politically to do this because they’re own people are going to say, “what do you mean our taxes are going to go up one and a half billion dollars in Louisiana?   Our kids aren’t going to go to school for 3 weeks.”

 Q  Who’s more responsible: These governors or Sen. Bond of Missouri who’s out on the campaign trail essentially taking credit for aspects of the stimulus bill that he brought to Missouri and these jobs and this money and all the rest when he essentially voted against the bill?  He’s taking credit for something he voted against.

 A.  He’s in trouble, though; he’s going to have a really strong opponent, I think, Robin Carnahan, an extraordinary Secretary of State, who is going to run against him.  He’s in trouble and that’s a tough vote for him to go home and explain. People are not stupid.  I think one of the things that got the Republicans in so much trouble was that they assumed voters were dumb and they wouldn’t notice if they voted no in Washington and came home and took credit for the stuff that people liked.  In Missouri you can’t do that.  You’ve got to make a principled stand.  If you make a principled stand and vote no then you can go home and sell the no and people will respect you for it.  But what you can’t do is vote no and pretend you didn’t vote that way because people won’t like that kind of stuff.  They don’t like it if Democrats do it either.

 Q  From the position of having recently been chairman of the DNC, you had the 50 state strategy.  Is the Republican strategy the “No state” strategy? What is going on?

 A  Look, to be serious about this, they have – it took us a long time to recover from the mistakes we had made.  The biggest mistake we made was not to talk about our values.  We talked about issues and not values because every consultant was saying “don’t talk about our values.”  Well the Republicans figured it out a long time ago and it took us a while to turn the ship around and then we realized we had to be in every state, talking to every American about our values. They have this bloodletting to do about who’s going to run this party.  Is it going to be the far right, these four or five governors, is it going to be the old style right wing or is it going to be a new kind of Republican.  And they aren’t ever going to win unless they can reorient this party to talk about things the American people care about.  Voting, getting all their votes against the stimulus package was a losing strategy because people are going to see them as obstructionist.  And it’s one thing to be obstructionist at a time where politics matters.  People are scared.  They don’t want any of this kind of stuff.  They want this stuff to go away and stop.  That’s why Barack Obama won. Not so much because he was a Democrat and the Republicans screwed it up.  It’s because his message was “it’s time to stop this.  It’s time to come together.”  Republicans haven’t gotten the message yet and they have to get it  in order for them to succeed as a party.

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