HEADLINE: Online Venture Seeks To Elevate the Debate;
Civility Is In, Rancor Out on Web Site Begun by Democratic, GOP Strategists
BYLINE: Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
A group of political strategists who have spent years firing heavy artillery at each other came together at the Hay-Adams Hotel yesterday, put aside their weapons, decried the polarized state of debate in America and vowed a new approach to peaceful coexistence.
Toward that end, they are launching a Web site that they hope will eventually reach 30 million opinion leaders, elevate public discussion on matters from politics to sports to culture and, in the process, make them some money.
Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd, who were senior advisers in President Bush's last two campaigns, are joining forces with Joe Lockhart, who served as a spokesman for President Bill Clinton, and Carter Eskew, a top strategist in Al Gore's presidential campaign, in creating what they have dubbed HotSoup.com.
"There is nobody who knows how broken the system is more than us. . . . Everyone in the room could say they contributed to the polarization," Lockhart said.
Pretty much dead.
I wanna know who got suckered into spending money on that one.