Edwards Visits Animal House

By G. Rollo Begley | Thursday, October 23, 2003

Say all the negative things you want about John Edwards, but you have to give him credit for at least one thing: by political standards, the dude's punctual.

Senator Edwards, the senior Senator visited Dartmouth October 14 for a townhall meeting at the Top of the Hop, followed by a reception at Alpha Delta fraternity. His focus, as usual, stressed his working class background, and he contrasted it with the likes of Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and, particularly, George Bush, who he thought was "completely out of touch" with most Americans. As evidence of this, he claimed that Bush is trying to shift the tax burden from the rich to the working and middle classes and "has done virtually nothing to create jobs."

Other specific Bush policies Edwards criticized included trade ("We have gone way too far towards free trade.") and the Patriot Act ("We cannot, cannot allow people like John Ashcroft to take away our rights, take away our freedom, take away our liberties."), for which, of course, he voted. He also declared his support for publicly funded campaigns and his opposition to Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq (which he described as a "shooting gallery"). The senator believes that Bush "has no chance of being re-elected unless he gets a significant chunk of the people he has left behind," which struck a chord with the audience, but came nowhere near the audience response to his statement that "I do not believe in George W. Bush's America."

Young conservatives were certainly present and vocal, however. While the senator was explaining his opposition to a ban on partial birth abortion, one infant conservative started crying loudly for his young, aborted brothers and sisters.

Edwards Visits Animal House

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