...
Howard Dean has been out of the limelight since becoming DNC Chair. No more. The
Philadelphia Inquirer has a story about him rallying Democrats at a fundraiser in Philly. He basically
"called out" Senator Rick Santorum...
Dean...called Santorum, a Republican who is up for reelection in Pennsylvania in 2006, a
"liar" and "right-winger" who actually lives in Virginia.
"He doesn't tell the truth," Dean told a gathering of about 150 at Bluezette on Market Street...
...Dean said Santorum had voted to kill Amtrak, an important service in Pennsylvania, and had then turned around and written a piece for The Inquirer saying he supported Amtrak.
He said that Santorum should return the more than $100,000 that Santorum's declared home school district, the Penn Hills School District in Allegheny County, paid over the last few years to educate his children at the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.
While attending the school online, Santorum's children actually lived at his house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. The charter school and the Penn Hills district are in a dispute over payments for Santorum's children. Santorum has maintained that he has followed the law.
Dean joked that Santorum should "stay in Virginia," although he added that the senator was "too much of a right-winger for Virginia. How about Venezuela?"
In a remark probably aimed at those who have problems with the probable Democratic Candidate Bob Casey Jr. being Pro-Life, Dean said this...
...Dean, whose defeat in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries was attributed to the belief that he was too liberal to defeat President Bush in the general election, appeared to be trying to reassure the party activists gathered at Bluezette that he had learned his lesson. He called on them to use less confrontational language with those socially conservative Democrats who deserted the party last year to vote for Bush.
"We are not the pro-abortion party," Dean said, repeating the old Bill Clinton line that "abortion should be safe, legal and rare"...