Howard Dean Will Fuck Your Shit Up:
Let's end this fucked-up, awful, violent, dark year and welcome the new one with just a ripple glimmer of hope: Howard Dean does not give a shit what you have to say. Except for his brief whine to Terry McAuliffe about attacks on him from fellow Democrats (an embarassment to all concerned), Dean has simply plowed through all the attacks like a mad farmer in an Alzheimer's-induced Robert Frost poem.

And it's getting hot in here for Dean. From the right, there's Ross Mackenzie and David Limbaugh all up in Dean's face for his anger and "electability;" there's Bob Novak writing about Dean's speaking "gaffes," apparently forgetting that he supports the king of the spoken "gaffe" (better known to the rest of America, the one that thinks Novak's combover looks pathetic, as "fuck-ups"); there's Cal Thomas, whose picture looks like Tennessee Williams dreaming of young Marlon Brando's big cock, talking about Dean's "pandering" by talking about Jesus (as if elections weren't one long panderpalooza); Emmett Tyrrell and Mona Charen, a woman who needs a hard, sweaty fucking if there ever was one, oiling the gears of the conservative "lie" machine, as if saying one's missing (now known to be dead) brother was a close relative in the military when said brother was not is a worse lie than, say, let's go to war because Saddam is trying to get uranium from Niger; there's O'Reilly, saying that Dean is pandering to the "far left," which must be a surprise to Cal Thomas or to all those far lefties who love Jesus; and Sean Hannity, who makes his usual intellectual prowess evident by saying that "Gadhafi wouldn't have taken the action" on his "nuclear weapons program" (which was some pipes strung together with chewing gum and fishing line) had Dean been in office. This is not to mention the Democratic attacks, with Joe Lieberman and John Kerry grasping at straws to keep their sad pipe dream campaigns alive.

But Howard Dean just keeps rolling, rolling in the dough, the popularity, the press. Every word he says is going to be parsed, probed, and pundited upon, but he's gonna say, "Fuck you" to those who would slow down the momentum. And that's the way it ought to be. When Dean said that Saddam's capture, while good, wouldn't make America any safer, everyone decried it, with Lieberman practically staking the rest of his campaign on the line. But, motherfucker, if Dean wasn't right, then no one else was. When Dean said that Osama ought to be tried and that the rule of law oughta be upheld, well, son of a bitch, even those who came out and said he was "wacko" for doing so (like James Carville) had to admit that after two plus years of an administration ruling by fiat, it was nice for someone to acknowledge that we have a justice system.

Nope, as Sidney Blumenthal points out, Howard Dean will fuck your shit up. He will take these attacks and keep going. He's playing the political game, baby, sleeves rolled up, stupid akimbo grin beaming, and he's gonna get more popular doing it. And he ain't no one's fool - he's a moderate who happened to take the correct position on a stupid war. When he says the President is "reckless," he's flaming the fire, flaming the fire. And, unlike Paul Krugman, the Rude Pundit says bring on the attacks. As we've said before, put everything out there now, when no one in the general public is fucking paying attention. Let all things become "old news," as Bush's AWOL allegations were called in the general election, before Rove and his vicious attack bitches clench their jaws around it.

It's 2004. Let's play election.

(To be clear, the Rude Pundit is not endorsing anyone, although it looks an awful lot like he's giving the heavy, sweaty, sticky man-love to Howard Dean. But the Rude Pundit is a fickle bastard. If Wesley Clark or John Kerry wink and offer reach arounds, the Rude Pundit will give them the love below.)