Example: How "moderation" de-nutted the Democratic Party

[kentuck]

"HAD ENOUGH?" or "A NEW DIRECTION FOR AMERICA" ? Don't they both really say the same? Inside these comments by Josh Marshall is buried Karl Rove's and the Republicans' strategy for running against the Democrats in the upcoming election. "The Democrats have no plan..." = "The Democrats are indecisive, untrustworthy with national defense, not someone you want to vote for in these dire times." That's their plan and we need to address it in a more direct way, not with "moderation" in the way we define it.
========================================

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008778.php

<snip>
The results seem to be in, from pretty much every quarter: Congressional Democrats' new theme or campaign program or whatever it is it's supposed to be exactly is just embarrassingly lame. Frank Rich says so. Jo-Ann Mort says so. If you haven't heard, it's A New Direction for America. So you can see what they mean.

In his Sunday Times column, Rich quotes Tony Fabrizio's line from last April: "The good news is Democrats don't have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one."

I don't want to pump this line up too much because it plays to this pattern of Democratic hang-wringing, that Republicans play up, knowing that it feeds ingrained perceptions of Democratic haplessness, indecisiveness and thus unworthiness to hold office.

<snip>
It's not about the Democrats. 2008 may be about the Democrats. Maybe 2010. Not 2006. 2006 is about George W. Bush and the Republican party. And, specifically, how many people are fed up with what's happened over the last six years and want to make a change? The constitution gives the people only one way to do that in 2006 -- put a hard brake on the president's power by turning one or both houses of Congress over to the opposition party.

That's why Newt Gingrich was so on the mark, ironically, when he suggested the Democrats' slogan should be "Had Enough?" (As a way of understanding Gingrich's particular genius, consider that "Had Enough?" and "A New Direction for America" are actually two ways of saying the exact same thing -- with the first forceful and infectious and the second limp and denatured.) Everything else the election is allegedly about is chatter. The details are so many fine points about making the sale, framing the question. And, yes, those are important. But that is the question. And nothing the geniuses on either side do will change that from being the question.
...more