Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

For starters, is it clear that Dean is advocating retreat-and-defeat? (I like condensing Mehlmanisms into hyphenated phrases.) Not even George Bush goes around the country saying our troops are going to win the war in Iraq. Yes, he talks about "total victory" and all that nice stuff, but how are we going to achieve victory? "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." We're not going to win anything - the Iraqis are going to win. In a followup AP story, this is a little clearer: "I wish the president had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we had gotten in there. The idea that we're going to win this war is just plain wrong."

But we're applying logic to a press release, which is nuts. The GOP doesn't approach its PR by logically debating Democratic arguments. It does PR, for the most part, by bashing Howard Dean. A search of gop.com reveals 67 press releases about or attacking Howard Dean - 53 of them since he was elected DNC chairman on February 12, 2005. In that period they've attacked House Dem Leader Nanci Pelosi 35 times and Hillary Clinton only 20 times. (Harry Reid has appeared in 76 attacks, mostly because of his role in the filibuster and judicial battles.)

Is it ordinary for a political party to attack the other party's chairman like this? In a word, no. When you consider that the RNC's anti-Dean attacks are echoed and hyped by Fox News, Drudge, and any number of pro-GOP bloggers, Dean has quickly become the most-attacked party chairman in history.

Which presents a question: Why are they going after Dean? The anti-Dean campaign hasn't damaged the Democrats at all.

Here's the best example. As Kos noted in a late November post, the Virginia Republican Party made many attempts to link Dem Gov. candidate Tim Kaine to Dean. Going off the fact that Dean's DNCs was giving $5 million to Kaine's campaign, the VAGOP angrily denounced "Tim Kaine's extreme political makeover that is being underwritten by Howard Dean and his liberal special interests." Virginia conservatives and swing voters were made aware that Howard Dean was supporting Tim Kaine. Then they elected him by 6 points over Republican Jerry Kilgore.

The Democrats won most every other election across America last month (with the notable exceptions of Ohio's ballot referenda and the NYC mayor's office), and most of the wins - New Jersey, California, New York - were in states where the GOP probably doesn't press the Dean issue. But that Virginia election is worth writing large. Conservative Virginia was one of the states that, in the 1990s, flipped from conservative Democratic control to right-wing Republican control under the leadership of George Allen and Jim Gilmore, in no small part because they tied Democrats to Bill Clinton.

And there's the crux of the issue - the GOP isn't getting anywhere with its Dean-bashing because Howard Dean is DNC chairman, not president, and voters don't care who the party chairmen are. Like so many Republican fumbles of late - Social Security, Harriet Miers - the insistence on Dean-bashing is a result of the party's beltway mentality. They've grown very used to the DC media, where things like party chairmen's gaffes or Meet the Press appearences are incredibly important and define coverage for weeks.

This tendency is aggravated by Howard Dean himself - in short, Republicans loathe him. In 2003, they  began attacking Dean early on as he gathered momentum as a presidential candidate. They hated the way he attacked Bush, but they were gleeful at the idea of running against a liberal from Vermont who had signed a civil unions bill. You only need to look at the difference between GOP fortunes in 2004 and 2005 to understand this - the modern GOP only prospers when it's running against somebody. When they had Kerry to bash, they rode high. They did very well running against Tom Daschle in 2002. Now, they see Dean as the closest thing to a national "opponent." So they oppose him.

I reckon many of you grimace when you see Drudge or your local right-wing talker pumping the new Dean "gaffe" and bashing him til their knuckles bleed. Maybe a different facial expression is called for.