The Internet built up Howard Dean -- now it will destroy him

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://rogerlsimon.com/archives/00000606.htm

01/14/2004: The Wrong Men for the Internet 

At the present moment, the Democratic Party seems to be headed over a
cliff at ninety miles an hour. With Bush already sitting on extremely
high poll numbers and the domestic and foreign situations breaking his
way, the Democrats have two of their worst candidates in recent memory
in the frontrunner positions.Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. They are
particularly bad in the Internet Age.

What, you say, Howard Dean is bad on the Internet? He was and is the
master of online fundraising and the first to recognize the power of
blogs. Yes, indeed! But that.s only part of the story. And it.s not
the more important part. The Internet is the greatest memory device we
have ever had. It stores virtually everything for instant access -- it.s
very difficult to hide what you have said. Bloggers and others will
dig it out and force the media to publicize it.

This is exceptionally dangerous for Dean who has defined himself and
staked his nomination on being the Most Antiwar Candidate, when, among
other things, quite a short time ago he was not. Today we see via
Instapundit that Dean wrote a letter to Clinton advocating Milosevic
be forcibly removed for humanitarian reasons, something he appears to
have rejected for Saddam, even though the Iraqi leader was vastly more
awful. Dean even advocated, in the case of Milosevic, going it alone
without the United Nations.

Normal political hypocrisy? Well, sure. But it is worse. Because this
is Mr. Tell-It-Like It-Is and he isn.t. And he can.t. There.s too much
information already on record. The Internet will be his great
undoing. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Wait until
summer. The same is true for Clark. In a sea of a million
fact-checkers, his idiot vacillations seem all the more ridiculous. If
he gets nominated, it is going to be a donnybrook.

....
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