DLC Hails Bush Policy Speech on Middle East
Press Action
Monday, November 17, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand11172003/
The Democratic Leadership Council, the group of wise men and women whose candidate (Howard Dean’s politics are very closely aligned with the DLC even if he is often portrayed as a political insurgent) we will be asked to support in the upcoming 2004 presidential election, applauded George W. Bush’s speech from two weeks ago on bringing American democracy to the Middle East. “This isn’t the first time that the president has delivered a fine speech arguing that our best weapons in the war on terror are the values of democracy and freedom,” the DLC said in a recent piece of daily commentary.
DLCers say Democrats should publicly hail Bush when he makes strong comments in support of American democracy, “instead of reflexively damning everything he says.” The DLC writes: “Aside from its firm grounding in Democratic tradition, a foreign policy centered on the aggressive promotion of democracy and freedom is precisely what many leading Democrats have been demanding throughout the Bush presidency. Presidential candidates Joe Lieberman and John Kerry have made the ‘wider war on terrorism,’ including democratization and economic liberalization in the Middle East, the centerpiece of their foreign policy alternatives.”
As we’ve said so many times, and as every foreign policy communiqué issued by the DLC shows, there’s really little difference on foreign policy issues between the neoconservatives who run the Bush White and the neoliberals who ran the Clinton administration and hope to win control of the White House in 2004. -- Mark Hand