Des Moines, Iowa ? Watching a parade last summer, White House political guru Karl Rove grew animated when a group of Howard Dean supporters marched by. “Come on, everybody! Go, Howard Dean!” Rove cheered.

“That’s the one we want,” he was overheard telling a friend.

Now, it looks as though Rove could get his wish. Dean is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he’s so confident of his chances that he’s talking about a postelection world tour.

But some of the stances winning applause for Dean from liberal Democrats — such as defending gay marriage, rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for a $3 trillion tax increase, possibly erecting new barriers to trade, re-regulating business and fervently opposing the war in Iraq — could destroy him in a general election.

Should Dean win the Democratic nomination contests this winter, he’ll find Bush waiting for him next spring. With no primary opponent, the Bush campaign will have $200 million-plus to buy television ads that would define Dean as an out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, weak-on-defense liberal, just as Republicans did with great success against George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Unless the war in Iraq worsens and the U.S. economy starts sinking again, Dean could find that his stands make it difficult for him to pick up any of the more culturally conservative states that went for Bush in 2000, particularly in the South.

The tax issue

Indeed, Rove could run much of an anti-Dean campaign using the words of Dean’s fellow Democrats.

Dean, for example, wants to repeal all tax cuts enacted under Bush, which he says total $3 trillion. Yet that would hurt the middle class by increasing income tax rates, restoring the so-called marriage penalty and raising the child tax credit.

“It would cost a typical middle-class family with two children an additional $2,000. These families are often already struggling with higher health care costs and higher state and local taxes,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in a recent debate.

Gay rights debate

Then there’s the emerging issue of gay marriage, thrust into the political realm this week by a Massachusetts court ruling supporting same-sex unions. A majority of Americans opposes gay marriage, and Dean is the Democrat most liable to anger that majority.

Dean boasts on the campaign trail that he signed Vermont’s law granting gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples. And he calls the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, “an unconstitutional, mean-spirited law that stoked fears of homosexuality.”

Anti-war stance

Dean is the only one among top-tier candidates who opposed the war in Iraq. It’s a fact he reminds voters of at every turn, most recently in a new ad criticizing Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, his chief rival in the Iowa caucuses that will start the nominating process Jan. 19.

Yet most Americans continue to say in polls that they supported the invasion of Iraq.

Yet Dean exudes confidence.

“If I win the Iowa caucuses, I think there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be the next president,” he said during a recent bus tour of Iowa college campuses. “Before I’m sworn in, I’ll go to the capitals of Europe and other capitals around the world to repair relations.”