Mark Steyn: How the Hulk Exploded in Iowa

The Spectator [UK] ^ | January 24, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

Watching Howard Dean go ape and John Edwards emerge as a viable contender

A little over a month ago, in the Wall Street Journal, I wrote that Governor Howard Dean looked ‘like Bruce Banner just before he turns into the Incredible Hulk, as if his head’s about to explode out of his shirt collar’. On Monday night, Dean, a front-runner in the polls only a week ago, placed a very poor third in the Iowa caucuses — the first time, since he began his political career running for the state legislature in 1982, that the Vermonter has lost an election. He didn’t take it well. He came out on stage, took his jacket off and handed it to Tom Harkin, the wily Democratic senator who fancies himself as Iowa’s kingmaker and had made the mistake of jumping on the Dean bandwagon just as the wheels began to fall off. Howlin’ Howard rolled up his sleeves, and you vaguely noticed from the popping veins on his forehead and so forth that he seemed a little further along in the old Hulk transformation than usual. As the Hulk says, ‘You don’t want to make me angry’ — and Dean had plenty of reason to be angry. He started loud and got louder, and after a minute his face was twisted and contorted and he was yelling at the top of his lungs:

‘WE WILL NOT GIVE UP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE! WE WILL NOT GIVE UP IN SOUTH DAKOTA!! WE WILL NOT GIVE UP IN ARIZONA!!! WE WILL NOT GIVE UP IN...’ South Dakota, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Michigan.... You name it, he’s not giving up there. He pretty much listed all 49 remaining states, and may well have gone on to Puerto Rico and Guam. My TV was beginning to smoke by then. ‘WE WILL NOT QUIT NOW OR EVER!!!!’ he screamed.

Er, actually, that’s not true. If he doesn’t win in New Hampshire this Tuesday, he’s over, and he might as well cut his losses rather than going on to South Dakota, Guam or anywhere else.

But on he roared, jabbing his fingers and screwing up his face: ‘AND THEN WE’RE GOING TO WASHINGTON, DC!!!!! TO TAKE BACK THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!’ And then he made a monster-type noise — ‘EEEAAARRGHRRR!!!!!!!’ — such as the Hulk makes when he picks up a tank, rips off its turret, and tosses what’s left over a distant mountain range. But the berserker howl was pitched somewhere in Charlotte Church’s upper register and it was hard not to notice that he hadn’t exploded into a big green monster. If anything, he seemed to be shrinking. It turns out he’s not the Hulk so much as a barmier version of Neil Kinnock at that Sheffield rally on the eve of the 1992 election, albeit with a different script: this we-will-never-give-up stuff sounded less like Churchill fighting them on the beaches and more like Frank Bough’s wife, after dear old Frank’s recurring bondage-dungeon problem, telling the Daily Mail that ‘we will not be beaten’.

-snip-

[Dog Gone]

It is forbidden to excerpt Mark Steyn.

[El Gran Salseron]

Whenever I see a Steyn article posted by quidnunc I automatically know that it is going to the an excerpt and don't bother to read them anymore.

[newgeezer]

... Tom Harkin, the wily Democratic senator who fancies himself as Iowa’s kingmaker and had made the mistake of jumping on the Dean bandwagon just as the wheels began to fall off.

There's my favorite thing about the Dem caucus. "Dungheap" Harkin only managed a piddlin' 18%!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Click on "The Spectator UK" for the entire article.

[ontos-on]

Could you explain the "excerpt issue" to someone who honestly does not know what the controversey is about. Does it indicate someone when they excerpt an article --how could they have done it differntly? I am asking seriously and would appreciate as much detail as you could.

[elli1]

Four years ago, the governor, doing a little weekend punditry on a widely unwatched TV show in Montreal, trashed the Iowa caucuses as a boondoggle for extremist interests that stiffs the average voter.

Ah, yes. This is what cooked Dean's goose in Iowa IMO. While I doubt that the rest of the country paid much attention to this, Iowans did. Dean's post-caucus rant has probably tipped the dominoes in his disfavor.

[goldstategop]

The ending, classic Mark Steyn is a howler. I really do think if Nikita Dean makes it as far as Super Tuesday, he'll bite the dust in the South. Hells bell, that Yankee won't carry a single state in Dixie. I think the winner there is gone be good ol' Southern Boy John Edwards and its likely he will wind up being the Democrats' nominee - another Southern Democrat in the Clinton mold. And he'll campaign more like Clinton than Gore. Folks, its 1992 all over again. Life's funny that way in matching up a Clinton pretender to the throne against another Bush.

[independentmind]

Kerry, the ketchup kid. Gotta love it!

[Tacis]

I have invented a word to describe the stupid dems who endorsed Dean when THEY thoughgt he was a winner and now have to backpeddle (PanderAl, are you listening?). The word is "disendeanuous."

[holdmuhbeer]

I think you nailed it, Edwards will carry the south and thus the nomination. We 'aint' gonna vote in a Yankee.

[FreedomPoster]

I can't imagine missing a Steyn article for any reason so petty. An annoyance? Sure. But not a reason to miss Steyn.

[KarlInOhio]

The governor forgot he was on TV; he was playing to the young college kids in the hall, the ‘Deaniacs’ that he’d energised on the Internet and whose ‘intense’ ‘passion’ would, according to Dick Morris, drive them to the polls, transforming American politics for ever. Well, they didn’t show up. Maybe they misunderstood and thought they could email their votes in, or leave them in the Comments section on Dean’s blog. Or maybe, like me when I’m trawling for kinky cyber-sex, they just said they’re 19 and mega-hip and they’re really 57 and 400 lbs.

Ouch.

[goldstategop]

LOL. Edwardserious is a word we will be hearing in the months to come. The last time the Democrats won with a Northerner at the head of the party ticket was in 1960.

[Redcoat LI]

I don't mind when it's excerpted from his website,I'm more than happy to give him a hit.
Otherwise...

[ImpBill]

"Dean’s other big mistake was his media relations. Unlike John McCain, he didn’t flatter the press. Indeed, his parting shot in Iowa was to tell them to ‘get a life’. Senator Harkin said Dean could take a few knocks because he’s ‘a fire hydrant’. And, like a fire hydrant, he’s getting pissed on by every mangy old pooch who passes by. It’s not just that Humpty Howard fell off the wall, but that nobody in the media likes him enough to help put him together again."

Steyn certainly has a way with putting together the "Kings English".

[rudypoot]

FOr pETE"S SAKE PING THE duDE with THE PinG LIst!

[SunStar]

Are we required to excerpt Mary Steyn articles too?

[ImpBill]

John Edwards is possibly the only Democrat candidate that can beat Bush. Hopefully their "party base" won't recognize that as they are so entrenched in believing that only the left wing, New England, institutionalized liberalism is the way back to power.

[hunter112]

The word is "disendeanuous."

Brilliant! Maybe you're the person who should come up with a word for Dean's blatherings, the uber-gaffes that he's used to go from clear front-runner to also-ran. Of course, there's a reasonable chance that we won't have use for the word in a month from now, unless its in an historical context.

I expect Dean to lose in NH, the only question there is will he come in second, or in the dangerous territory of below that. He clearly has enough money and organization to keep going a bit longer, and I think in the next round, he stands a chance of winning two, maybe three of the minor states. Will that be enough to keep him going, especially if Kerry fails to keep his winning streak after he gets to states where people don't much like New Englanders, even if they might have served in Vietnam?

At this point, my hope is that Dean stays viable enough to be a nasty problem for the Rat convention, at least as much a distraction for the press as I had hoped Al Sharpton to be. The eventual nominee needs to suck up to the Deanie-weenies in order to have a shot at winning the Presidency, if they stay home, or vote third party (with or without Dean at the top of that ticket), the eventual Rat nominee will do no better than Dean would do if he was the Democrat standard bearer in November.