Howie practices his fancy foot work

Dean: Still a Dove

IT would be inaccurate to say that Howard Dean, the candidate of the anti-war Left, is now moving toward the center. It would be more precise to say that the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president is galloping like hell toward the center.

The former governor of Vermont is evidently so confident of his ability to hold onto the Bush-haters and pacifist lunatics who have catapulted him into the lead that he is now working to make himself palatable to the non-loons in the Democratic primary electorate by trying to sound reasonable on foreign policy.

Yesterday, in what was billed as the first major foreign-policy speech of his candidacy, Dean actually sounded rather belligerent - a big fan of American military action in every case he could name except where Iraq is concerned.

Ruh Oh! What about the Kool Aid drinkers who are Deano's big supporters?

Dean's speech yesterday might prove very painful for some of his more naive supporters - who may have discerned in Dean's hysterical opposition to the war in Iraq their own opposition to all military action taken by the United States.

Dean is doubtless correct to believe that he can offend such supporters a bit now. With the seductive scent of primary victory teasing their nostrils, are they really going to start snorting fire again and quit him for Dennis Quixote - I mean, Dennis Kucinich?

If they had any integrity they would, but don't hold your breath.

Besides, Howie can keep 'em happy with bread and circuses like Howard's Hatefest:

YOU won't be seeing any video of Howard Dean's x-rated, epithet-ridden New York fund-raiser because Team Dean made sure to bar the TV cameras. Which suggests they expected trouble.

Maybe it was the same foresight that inspired Dean to seal his records as Vermont governor for 10 years because of worries, as he put it in a moment of candor to Vermont public radio, about "future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."

So there were no TV cameras last Monday night when pro-Dean comics took the stage on West 18th St. in Chelsea at a $250-a-head Dean fund-raiser (reduced from $500) and competed to see how often they could use the F-word in the same sentence.

Now that's entertainment!

Here's some of the lowlights:

Comic Judy Gold dissed President Bush as "this piece of living, breathing s---" and Janeane Garofalo ridiculed the Medicare prescription-drug bill that Bush had just signed as the "you can go f--- yourself, Grandma" bill.

Just a few days before, rival John Kerry had used the F-word to attack Bush in Rolling Stone magazine in an apparent bid to sound hip, but Dean's event was "enough to make John Kerry blush," as rival Dick Gephardt's spokesman Erik Smith tartly put it.

And the Dean event got a lot worse. Comedian David Cross used the N-word for blacks in a disjointed "joke" apparently based on the premise that it's fine for a pro-Dean comic to use racial epithets as long as the goal is to claim Republicans are racists.

Comic Kate Clinton evoked Michael Jackson (hit with new child-sex-abuse charges) and said: "Frankly, I'm far more frightened of Condoleezza Rice" - the Bush national security adviser who has nothing in common with Jackson except being black.

Rice seems to drive liberal woman comics especially nuts. Sandra Bernhard insulted her in racial terms with a "Yes Massa" accent at another Dean fundraiser the same night. Perhaps the pro-Dean comics find it unbearable that the most powerful black woman in U.S. history, close friend to the president and his wife - and a brilliant classical pianist to boot - dares to be a Republican.

Actually, there was something to offend everyone. Dean rival Joe Lieberman got ridiculed for being unable to campaign on Jewish holidays because he's Orthodox. Vice President Dick Cheney was accused of talking "like Mary Jo Buttafuoco."

Cheney's wife Lynne was called "Lon Chaney" - the long-ago movie star who specialized in playing ghouls in horror films. And Cheney's daughter Mary, who is gay, was called "a big lezzie."

These folks don't seem too PC! But that's OK, they're leftoids so it doesn't count.

Nice friends you have, Howie.