When a Republican talking head offers the Democratic Party some "friendly advice," a red flag should go up automatically.
And since Howard Dean's election as head of the DNC, the volume of such advice has reached a 52-week high.
Consider, for example, the pearls of wisdom offered by Joe Scarborough in his MSNBC.com blog. At first, I was tempted to say that Joe doesn't get it. But that isn't so: He knows exactly what he's doing.
He's engaging in right-wing "debate"--a/k/a suppression of dissent--under the guise of commentary. Let's take a closer look at his tactics.
It only takes Scarborough three paragraphs to hit his stride.
The Dean Democrats are veering wildly left in part because that is the way they are being pulled by grassroots forces.
The Washington Post's Dan Balz explained that groups like moveon.org, who almost nominated Howard Dean as their presidential candidate, remain convinced that John Kerry lost in 2004 not because he was too liberal, but because he was not liberal enough.
Let's break this down on the Telestrator:
< pulls out grease pencil >
Right-wing debate tactic #1: Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes true. Dean is not left-wing, and I'll spare you the arguments why he isn't. The point is that the GOP will say it enough times in hopes Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack will believe it. It worked with "Gore is a liar," so why not Dean?
Right-wing debate tactic #22a: Define your opposition by its most polarizing members. Hence the gratuitous reference to MoveOn.com [the judges docked him a point for not mentioning Michael Moore, but nobody's perfect].
Notice that Scarborough didn't mention Dean's other supporters, like his House colleague John Murtha, the hawkish Pennsylvania Democrat. Or, for that matter, Scott Mattox, the Florida Democratic chairman from his neck of the woods who drives a pickup truck and loves NASCAR.
< puts grease pencil away >
Actually, if you scroll down to Scarborough's blog entry from Sunday, it gets even zanier: He thinks the Democrats' salvation is a young Zell Miller. I kid you not. He praises Miller's record on civil rights and the environment, conveniently ignoring some of the Religious Right bedfellows he acquired during his term as Senator and is venom-filled keynote speech at the GOP Convention.
Scarborough's advice to the Democrats comes free of charge. But let the buyer beware: You get what you pay for.
