How can Democrats hope to beat Republicans this year? By running
against imaginary enemies, which is exactly what they’re doing.
The RealClearPolitics average of polls on America’s
generic ballot preference has Republicans up by 6.8 points. The
last Gallup poll had Republicans up by 12 to 17 points, depending
on turnout. President Obama’s approval numbers are negative, though
Americans still like him personally, which indicates that his
agenda, not his personality or skin color, is what’s driving voters
into the open arms of Republicans.
Democrats can’t run on their record because voters hate
it, so they are trying to portray Republicans as pawns of
mysterious, sinister forces.
When Obama last week accused the United States Chamber of
Commerce of being foreign-funded, he wasn’t just randomly spouting
gibberish. He was executing part of a national party strategy to
cast doubt on the loyalty of Republicans. Obama’s claim was merely
a variation on a theme.
The president warned that “special interest groups that
are spending unlimited amounts of money all on attack ads, and they
don’t disclose who’s behind them. Just this week, we learned that
one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in
money from foreign sources. So the question for the people of
Illinois is: Are you going to let special interests from Wall
Street and Washington and maybe places beyond our shores come to
this state and tell us who our senator should be?”
That ought to sound familiar. Democrats have been saying
it for months. Well, for years actually, but they’re saying little
else this year. Obama brought up the usual bogeymen — special
interests and Wall Street — while adding “maybe places beyond our
shores.” That was a strange formulation, but it sounded the same
note as the Democrats’ more common “companies that send jobs
overseas” phrasing.
That bogeyman is in use nationwide. The Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee has aired an entire ad devoted to
attacking North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Harold
Johnson by claiming he pledged to keep tax breaks for “companies
that outsource jobs overseas.” The DCCC uses the same false claim
against Republican candidates in Maryland, Washington state, New
York, and Connecticut. It’s also popping up in Democratic and
labor-union ads in U.S. Senate races and the Massachusetts’
governor’s race. It’s completely false, as factcheck.org
reported last Friday, but desperate politicians
make desperate claims.
With its agenda a complete political disaster, peddling
falsehoods and tarring Republicans as pawns of “special interests”
is all the Democratic Party has left. And the party is doing it
with gusto.
“Ron Johnson has made it clear whose side he’s on
—corporate special interests, lobbyists and the Wall Street banks
that got us into this economic mess,” Wisconsin Democratic Party
Chairman Mike Tate said of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron
Johnson last week.
“They want to put special interests back in the driver’s
seat in Washington,” President Obama said of Republicans during his
Sept. 25th national radio address.
Maryland Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen said on Sept. 30
that Democrats should be reelected this fall because they chose “to
rein in the power of some of the big corporate special interests
who had their sway during the previous eight years.”
Accusing his Republican opponent of supporting
millionaires over the middle class, Democratic Rep. Tim Walz of
Minnesota wrote in an op-ed this week, “We need a more balanced
approach that puts middle-class interests over Wall Street special
interests.”
In his new radio ad for Florida Democratic Senate
candidate Kendrick Meek, President Obama says, “Kendrick’s been a
powerful voice for Floridians, standing up to special interests to
hold Wall Street accountable, fighting the insurance industry to
make sure that healthcare isn’t denied our children because of a
pre-existing condition.”
The attacks are all the same. They don’t go after actual
Republican policies. They simply accuse Republicans of being in the
pockets of big-money backers from afar.
What’s telling is not just that they’re resorting to such
desperate distractions, but that the claims have become more
outlandish as the election has drawn closer. The Obama White House
went from claiming that Rush Limbaugh led the Republican Party to
claiming that Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and mysterious foreigners
were bankrolling it to advance their sinister agenda.
But it’s really hard to blame the Democrats for such
childish behavior. After all, would you want to run on their
record?
