12/10/2003
Today, Ryan Lizza was quoted by [url=http://www.opinionjournal.com]Opinionjournal.com[/url] as saying that “the Democrats are splitting into two parties: the party of Clinton, and the party of Dean.” This was something Ms. Lizza wrote [b]last month[/b]! A very impressive bit of insight into the Democratic Party’s growing troubles.
At the same time, I think we’ve all been missing, or overlooking, a central reason [b]where[/b] this whole schizm started in the first place. The fact is, one of Clinton’s field generals is responsible for sparking this internal civil war, and his name is Terry McAuliffe.
The tactics that Dean uses have always been the Terry McAuliffe trademark approach to campaigning. The reason for this tactic is simple, Mr. McAuliffe recognized that in order to halt and/or reverse the Democratic Party’s steady slide from power in Washington, he had to ignite the party’s base.
How did he plan to ignite the base? Fear, fear, fear, and more fear! In other words, playing on the fears and anger of many hardcore liberals frustrated by a decade of failure. Its not a new tactic for the DNC and it is a very effective way of getting the party’s base to the polls. The only problem with that tactic is that it tends to turn off moderate voters who recognize these tactics for what they are… an appeal to ignorance.
So, how do you incite the hardcore liberal base of the Democratic Party without scaring off moderates? You play “Good Cop/Bad Cop” of course. So, while a Democrtic candidate is off saying reasonable things to win moderate voters, Terry McAuliffe launches the angry assault that we’ve come to know and love him for to get the hardcore voters engaged and incited.
So, while one element of the party launches their vile attacks on political opponents, the candidates can run their campaign without losing many or any moderate votes because the they can just distance themselves from the message while, at the same time, affirming the right for that group to “express its opinion.” Remember the 2000 presidential election when the Texas chapter of the NAACP ran a TV ad against the then-Governor Bush tying him to racist acts such as the one in which James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup being driven by three white supremacists. The TV ad literally had a camera’s-eye view of what it must have looked like for Mr. Bird as he was dragged to death, all the time decrying Governor Bush’s unwillingness to support hate crime legislation.
When Tim Russert questionted Gore and asked if he would call for the ad to be pulled, big Al’s response was basically that he would not interfere with those groups that wished to “express” their issues during the campaign. In other words, “I won’t say directly that I approve of the ad, but, really, I do.”
Ex-Governor Gray Davis loved this kind of political Pearl Harbor tactic. Wait until just before the election and then lower the boom with all kinds of accusations against your opponent, but do it through other groups so that you are removed from any accusations of mud-slinging. But are in a position to benefit from the media focus.
And the liberal media, of course, is only too willing to play along. But I seriously digress…
So, in comes Howard Dean who has decided to borrow from Terry McAuliffe’s playbook. What has this done for Dean? He has focused on the very short-term goal of winning the nomination and seems to have decided that he’ll worry about the rest of it later. It’s likely, then, that he is hoping to do a quick right-turn after he wins to begin positioning himself as a moderate. In other words, Dean is playing a version of “Good Cop/Bad Cop” where he gets to play both roles.
Will it work? I seriously doubt it. Despite McAuliffe’s constant appeal to the base instincts of their voting base, they’ve made no gains at all that I can see in the past several years. I expect that Dean’s version of the McAuliffe manuever will prove even less effective.
Time will tell. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go to bed.
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
2 Comments
Recent poll shows Dean getting destroyed by Bush 2 to 1 in New Hampshire.
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