American Morning

Good morning, Cliff, nice to see you.

CLIFF MAY, FMR. RNC COMM. DIR.: Happy Valentine’s Day to both of you.

O’BRIEN: Thank you. The flowers, the chocolates, you guys are just too much. I appreciate it. I’m just joking you.

Let’s get right to Howard Dean. He sounds like he’s trying to strike a little bit of a moderate tone. For example, he said he plans to reach out for the evangelical community. He said Democrats aren’t necessarily pro-abortion.

Do you think, Victor, in fact, Howard Dean has to change his tune and embrace the moderate position in order to be successful?

KAMBER: I’m not sure Howard Dean has to change. I think Democrats have to reach out a broad umbrella, like I think they have. Howard Dean, I think, will be a terrific spokesperson for the party. I think he’ll be a terrific fund-raiser, a terrific organizer. I think he’s a No. 1 chairman.

In terms of the kinds of messages, we have to reach out across the board. We have to go to our base and continue to go to our base, but we have to go beyond our base if we’re going to be the majority party.

O’BRIEN: Some Republicans don’t see it that way. Former House majority leader Newt Gingrich said this, “If Democrats have a true death wish, he’d be the perfect guy to go with.” Sounds like he’s pretty thrilled today — Cliff.

MAY: Yes. Look, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, they were opposed to Dean taking this job. The minority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, the minority leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, they didn’t want Dean to get this job.

I think if he does reach out, that’s a good thing, but buying a pickup truck and putting a gun rack in it probably isn’t going to work.

Look, he has said one thing that I do agree with — he said Democrats can’t just be opposed to Republicans, can’t just be opposed to Bush. I think he’s absolutely right on that, and I think you have to wait to see if he actually does anything that follows through.

O’BRIEN: Let’s talk about the Iraq elections, because I want to get to lots of things; we’ve got a lot to cover this morning.

Vic, let’s begin with you. It seems that Ayad Allawi’s party came in a third, a distant third, and in fact it’s the religious Shiites who’ve won. So has this been good news from the elections for the U.S.?

KAMBER: Well, I don’t think we know what it means. It certainly isn’t good news in terms of who we backed and supported; 70 to 72 percent of the people who were elected side more with Iran than they do with the U.S. The party we supported got 13 percent of the vote.

Having said that, the election was on the first step in what we called democracy. We have no idea how this group is going to form, how they’re going to govern, what’s going to happen going ahead. You know, there were 111 parties running, and three of them got 85 percent of the vote. We have to hope that the two major parties and the one in particular, is inclusive and opens their doors, but only time will tell.

O’BRIEN: When you look at the numbers, 58 percent of Iraq’s register the voters participated. That’s pretty darn close to what we get in the United States, and this is for a first election, and yet the number of Sunnis who participated much, much lower turnout there.

Cliff, what do you take away from this?

MAY: I think this is really good news. Yes, the American candidate came in third. That shows that this was not an American- engineered election. We wanted Iraqis to make their own decisions. Iraqis have made their own decisions. That’s the way it should be.

The Shiite list came in first, but they got a plurality, not a majority. That means they’ll have to make deals. That’s politics. That’s what we want them to begin practicing.

The Kurds came in second. The Kurds are people who actually did cheer when Americans arrived in Iraq, and that’s good. By the way, the Kurds are Sunnis, just not Arabs, but they’ll insist on minority rights.

So overall, I’m very encouraged by this. By the way, you’re right, Sunnis did not vote in high numbers. Two reasons — one, some were frightened to do so. So we have to go after those who intimidated those. Those are the terrorists and the insurgents. Secondly, there were some who chose not to. Well, you know, there are people in the South who didn’t want to vote in the election that brought Lincoln back to the White House. There are people — whites in South Africa who didn’t want to vote for Nelson Mandela. They cannot hold democracies hostage.

O’BRIEN: Cliff May, Victor Kamber. Guys, we’re out of time. Nice to see you, as always, thanks.

KAMBER: Thank you.

MAY: You, too.