Will Howard Dean do what he just said he would? [View All]

[Karmadillo]

Interesting proposal.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090927/

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At the end of tonight's event, Paul Johnson, an independent voter from Nashua who supported John McCain in 2000 and has supported Dean since May, tells Dean that he's "deeply troubled" by the idea that his candidate is going to turn down federal matching funds and bust the caps on campaign spending. Politics is awash in too much money, Johnson says. Why not take the moral high ground and abide by the current system? That sounds like a great idea until Bush spends $200 million, Dean says. Well, then "challenge him to spend less," Johnson replies. Tell him you'll stay under the spending limits if he does, too. Dean's face lights up. "I'll do that at the press conference on Saturday," he says. "That's a great idea." (Saturday at noon is when Dean is scheduled to announce the results of the campaign vote on whether to abandon public financing.)

I walk over to Dean's New Hampshire press secretary, Matthew Gardner, and tell him his candidate just agreed, in an instant, to announce on Saturday that he'll stay under the federal spending caps for publicly financed candidates, if President Bush agrees to do the same (which, admittedly, is more than a little unlikely.) Gardner looks puzzled, then laughs. "That'll be interesting," he says. "We'll see if it happens."

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