Here’s a scary proposition: President Bush takes a page out of Gray Davis’s playbook in the spring.
Anyone else remember what Davis did in the Republican primary season last year? Sensing that Dick Riordan was his real threat, Davis spent millions on a negative campaign — while Riordan was campaigning against Bill Simon. So before the Republican voters had picked a candidate, Davis did all he could to ensure they’d pick the candidate he thought he could beat. Result? Simon unexpectedly beat Riordan in the primary, and Davis cruised to a victory in November. (Lot of good it did him, by the way…)
What made it possible was Davis’s war chest and the lack of any real opposition from the Democrats.
Sound familar?
It would seem to me that if Dean continues this pace, we could start seeing a coordinated attack from the Republicans — well ahead of the primaries.
And perhaps this is why the Dean campaign shifted tactics last month. By taking the fight directly to Bush early on, anything coming from Bush & Rove ends up looking like a response to Dean’s critiques. That is much easier to dismiss than a preemptive attack.
Thoughts?
the brilliant part about howard's campaign (make that "one of the brilliant parts") is that by taking the fight directly to bush, he creates a sense of inevitability about his candidacy, as if to say "my real opponent is george bush, not these also-rans for the democratic nomination"
ReplyDeletealso, karl rove has been widely reported as saying that he'd love to have george bush run against howard dean, so any flagrant attacks on dean during the primary season would blow his cover, and would give howard an opening to claim that rove actually fears his candidacy... in other words, a huge backfire in the making for the bush campaign
Your post could be taken almost directly from my now censored post at Talkleft. Typical how a lefty censors out of fear and bans the fearsome words in the hope they will not be seen again. Allow me to reconstruct my message as far as memory will take me.
ReplyDeletePeople, people, people! It's about time you wake up. Bush is going to enter the primaries without opposition and with 200 million dollars to spend campaigning right up to the convention in New York. What do you think he is going to do with that money? He's going to use it to show racist and anti-religion DemoRATS blocking his badly needed African American, Hispanic and Catholic judicial nominees. He's going to run Howard Dean into the ground telling the nation how Dean wants to raise their taxes, in some cases by several hundred percent. He's going to tell America that he is their protector, that he will get the bad guys before the bad guys can come here and that the DemoRATS think it just isn't fair to protect the United States if it means shooting first.
We have unlimited money on our side and we have a genius who knows how to pull the strings of the population. Karl Rove has studied history. He knows what works. As long as the United States remains a place of fear, George Bush will be president.
I keep seeing silliness on the left. I almost feel sad for your people. You apparently don't see what is happening in California, TexaS and Nevada and Alabama. Especially Texas and Alabama.
The day is not far off when Americans will equate Democrat with communist. No one who loves his country and loves God will be willing to wear that label. We will hound you until you disavow your tax grubbing and plea for mercy rather than jail. Bush in 2004 is just the beginning of the final consolidation of power in all three branches of the federal government. The states are in process.
Nominate Dean or any other DemoRAT. It doesn't matter because no matter what, you people are on the way out of power and as often as possible into prison for treason against the United States.
To Bush2004 - Did someone forget to take his meds this morning? At the very least, you need to familiarize yourself with the Bill of Rights, especially the one about freedom of speech.
ReplyDeleteBTW - how do you feel about this money quote from an opinion piece in today's Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0308290157aug29,1,942691.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed)?
". . . the story going around town [is] that President Bush has told the Pentagon he wants "no more American dead" after next March. By then, the electoral campaign will be well under way, and perhaps zealotry will give way to reality--or at least to a change in administration."
Can you say "wag the dog?"
He just cracks me up! Check this out from Taegon Goddard's Political Wire http://politicalwire.com/
ReplyDeleteBush Claims He's The Underdog
"President Bush's campaign -- expected to dwarf Democratic hopefuls by raising $200 million or more for the primaries, with no GOP rival -- is appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won't have enough cash to defend himself against Democratic attacks," the Chicago Sun Times reports.
The strategy worked in California but remember it backfired on Jeb in Florida. He still won nicely but at the time everyone thought he helped give the nomination to the guy who could challenge him better than Janet Reno.
ReplyDeleteI had mentioned this in the official Dean blog as well. We have seen negative attacks on Dean before. And every time, it only made Dean's popularity go up. Russert tried to slam Dean and Dean's donations soared. The question is, are the Republicans going to acknowledge Dean early on and give his candidacy the legitimacy that they long dismissed? It's a lose-lose situation for Karl Rove. Either let people know that Dean is tha real threat to Bush and show them how scared you are, or sit tight and let Dean's campaign build up. Karl Rove and George Bush is going to have more money than they can spend in 3 campaign seasons. But Dean is going to have the largest grassroots support on his site. And no amount of money can defeat the grassroots support that Dean has. I think it's good that Bush is raising all that money, since a whole lot of people will need air tickets to Crawford, TX on Jan 20, 2005.
ReplyDeleteBush can't attack Dean until Dean has the nomination in an apparent lock. Any campaign ad needs the candidate to personally say that he sponsored the ad; and Bush attacking Dean too early would lend legitimacy to the Dean "insurgency."
ReplyDeleteIt will be a delicate balance for Bush/Rove to hold off until Dean has is the assumed nominee, but is still vulnerable to other Dems. (South Carolina, anyone?)
Either way, once the shit starts to fly, we're all going to be swimming in it.
10 Questions for Howard Dean
ReplyDelete1. Why did you support sending Vermont's nuclear waste to the poor, mostly Hispanic town of Sierra Blanca, Texas, 16 miles from the Mexican border -- a plan described as "blatant environmental racism" by Paul Wellstone?
2. Why did the Dean administration increase funding for Vermont's state colleges by only 7% while you increased funding for prisons by 150%?
3. Why did IBM, the leading polluter in Vermont, receive your Environmental Achievement Award nine times?
4. What did you mean when you said, "I've had 40 or 45 private meetings with IBM since I've been governor. And IBM has gotten pretty much everything they've asked for"?
6. Why did you wait for the courts and legislature to bring about the civil union bill before you supported it? Why did you sign the bill in private when you finally did sign it?
7. Why do you oppose the Israeli Labour Party candidate for prime minister Amram Mitzna's call for unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians?
8. While you acknowledge that you "haven't condemned Congress for passing the Patriot Act," Bernie Sanders from your own state of Vermont is leading efforts in Congress to overturn the Act. Why are you not supporting Bernie Sanders' efforts and condemning Congress for its attack on civil liberties?
9. How do you respond to Annette Smith of Vermonters of a Clean Environment who says: "Dean's attempt to run for president as an environmentalist is nothing but a fraud. He's destroyed the Agency of Natural Resources, he's refused to meet with environmentalists while constantly meeting with developers, and he's made the permitting process one, big dysfunctional joke. EP under Governor Dean meant Expedite Permits, not Environmental Protection"?
10. Since you pride yourself on your "fiscal responsibility" who do you refuse to even consider any decreases in the bloated Pentagon budget?