Right wing Republicans can't function without smearing their opponents.
It's important for Democrats to hammer back. If Democrats hammer back the way Rep. Murtha hammers back, it shows strength. For the second tier part of the strategy to work for Democrats, it's not even necessary to engage in smears (I notice Murtha generally plays it straight when he hammers back; right wing Republicans aren't capable of playing it straight and it often shows). This year both Bush and the general performance of Congress are the issue. When taking on Republican nonsense, it's only necessary to hammer at the thousand acts of dishonesty, the thousand acts of corruption, the thousand acts of ideological nonsense and the thousand acts of incompetence.
For Republican candidates who are ordinary conservatives and who are begininng to distance themselves from Bush, it might be a generous gesture to acknowledge their difference but it's important to point out that they have not stood up to Bush or stood up to the corrupt Republican leadership in the last four years and that a Democrat will. I would hammer away at why the corruption in Iraq hasn't been investigated by Congress and and why the response to Katrina shows virtually the same pattern.
But the first tier part of the strategy is still extremely important. Democrats need to show that they're listening, that they care (yeah, that still matters), that they see the problems, that they have ideas for moving the nation forward again (most Americans think we're headed in the wrong direction and they would probably agree that under Republican leadership our nation has drifted into a stall on a wide range of issues).
--By the way, I went back and read Steve's post on Kerry. Steve was right. I don't understand why Kerry coasted so long after winning the primaries. But one difference this time is that the media is not totally in the thrall of Bush. I don't think Kerry was creative enough in getting his message out after the primaries. In 1992, Clinton had a similar problem and turned to James Carville to handle the second tier problem and turned to multiple outlets to get his message across.
Posted by Craig at September 3, 2006 04:03 PM