Oh NO!

by digby

Howard Fineman writes:

The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a Democratic Congress would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.

Rather than defend Bush, Rove will seek to rally the Republicans’ conservative grass roots by painting Democrats as the party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness. That’s where the national message money is going to be spent.

… before this election season is over, Republican and conservative voters are going to know a lot about Conyers. To hear the GOP tell it, the impeachment of the president will be the No. 1 priority if Conyers gets his say, which of course Rep. Nancy Pelosi will be only too happy to give him. The aim will be to rally the GOP base with talk of a political apocalypse.

The issue of gay marriage will play a part. So far this year, at least seven states will have on their ballots measures to ban same-sex marriage: Alabama, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. There are citizen-led campaigns seeking to add the issue to ballots in Arizona, Colorado and Illinois.

[…]

Bush and Rove are daring the Democrats to turn the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden as head of the CIA into a fight over the president’s secret eavesdropping program. That’s a fight they think they can win politically, by turning a legitimate constitutional issue into another Us vs. Them morality play.

Can someone please tell me how this differs from any Republican campaign of the last 25 years? Bush was at 70% in the last mid-term and the whole campaign was about how Democrats like Tom Daschle and Max Cleland were in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. They always say we are going to raise taxes. They always say we are degenerates. If they can find a dark-skinned boogeyman, they’ll use that too.

The only new thing in this is the psych out in which they are supposedly “daring” the Dems to make a big deal out of the domestic spying stuff. You certainly can’t say they don’t have chutzpah. They are barely breathing and they are still issuing threats. (And the Dems should really wonder why they are so vocal about this. You’d think if it was such a winner for them they’d just let the Dems run with it, wouldn’t you?)

Overall, this is just a standard issue, off the rack Republican campaign. I’m sure this one will be even more excessively dirty than usual. And if they lose they will howl to high heaven that the election was stolen by illegal immigrant voter fraud. SOP.

Hopefully, the Dems are finally confident enough (31%!) to run their own campaigns and not worry about this stale, negative GOP cant. It’s all they know how to do. There’s nothing we can do about it.

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