THIS IS NOT ->Delawareliberal

The fact that Howard Dean is regarded as a liberal by the unhindged GOP only serves to show how far off the right-wing deep end George Bush has dragged this country with his corrosive fear mongering.

What I heard from Dean in Wilmington was very similar to the things I heard from him when I first started paying attention to politics. It was what I heard from Dean when he was a little known, fiscally moderate Governor from a small libertarian state.

"Let's return to common sense and dispense with the name calling."

Having listened to him in Wilmington I honestly believe that he wants a return to the country we had pre-Bush when having a different take on an issue did not make you a "traitor" or a "terrorist". He wants a return to an America where ideas that work rise to the top regardless of the party affiliation of the person who proposed them.

This common sense message is lost among people who want Dean to be a Democratic savior (like me) and people who want him to be the liberal bogeyman whose every utterance is used for the next GOP fundraising letter.

The bottom line is Dean is niether the savior nor the bogeyman that people make him out to be. He is what he has always been, a man who is using his position to say "what's so funny about honest and open government? What is so traitorous about a strong national defense that rests on telling the truth? And what is so crazy about health care system for everyone?"