Boogiemen and Red Herrings

Jonathan Chait's newest TNR via LA Times article raises an important point: the GOP prefers to run against a boogieman rather than against the actual Democratic Party. Here is just a taste, from the article's conclusion:

we're not even getting a debate about a caricature of the Democratic position, let alone the actual one. Instead, we're getting things like this: GOP Representative John Hostettler of Indiana is running an ad warning that if Democrats take power and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi becomes House speaker, she "will then put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda, led by Barney Frank, reprimanded by the House after paying for sex with a man who ran a gay brothel out of Congressman Frank's home."

What is the homosexual agenda? The ad does not say. (Apparently it involves raising the minimum wage and cutting the interest rate on government-backed student loans. I can just see it if the Democrats win--all those gay Wal-Mart employees, cackling with glee as they use their fat $7.25-an-hour salaries to pay off their suddenly puny college debts.)

Which is my point. Republicans don't want an actual choice election, they want to run against a mythological Democratic Party so frightening that the voters overlook all the GOP's failures.

Not all the Republican campaigns are as vicious and mindless as Hostettler's. But nearly all of those campaigns are trying to run against a boogeyman. They raise the specter of a radical Democratic agenda, but they refuse to say what they don't like about that agenda. And there's a good reason for that: It's popular.

I alluded to this idea last week, referring to Ted Kennedy. Noam Scheiber at The Plank has another example related to Hillary Clinton. According to a voter interviewed in the New York Times:

"There's going to be a moderate party for Joe Blow, and whether that party is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, that's the battle we're seeing," Mr. Yelton [a lifelong North Carolina Democrat who recently switched parties] said. "I expect to see Hillary Clinton quoting Scripture before it's over with."

But as Scheiber points out:

Well, um, Hillary actually does quote Scripture. She has for years. A very crude nexis search reveals that she invoked the Bible while discussing immigration earlier this year, and two years ago in a speech about poverty. And, in case you're wondering whether she only trots out Jesus in the name of liberal causes, the answer is no. Her book Living History goes on at length about the importance of prayer in her personal life.

That the idea of Hillary quoting Scripture is so absurd it works as the punchline of a joke--and, for that matter, of a piece in The New York Times--strikes me as pretty troubling for Democrats, though it's not altogether surprising.

And the reason for this "trouble"? That GOP boogieman. Why argue against what someone actually believes in if you can simply lie about who they are and people believe it? Both parties do this, of course, but it seems to have become the GOP stock in trade, especially with the ascension of Karl Rove.