Here we go
Karl Rove and the rest of Bush’s goon squad are already gearing up to face Howard Dean next fall:
President Bush’s campaign has settled on a plan to run against Howard Dean that would portray him as reckless, angry and pessimistic, while framing the 2004 election as a referendum on the direction of the nation more than on the president himself, Mr. Bush’s aides say.
You see, Howard Dean is “reckless” because he actually wants to change things, “angry” because he speaks his mind, and “pessimistic” because he believes that the course Bush has set the U.S. on can only lead to disaster. In other words, it’s all a matter of what buzzwords you want to use to describe a candidate, and the Bush machine is trying to get a head start by pushing these three negative words to describe Dean. As Atrios points out, they’ve now started to try and get the pessimism meme going, so, given what a bunch of lapdogs the mainstream media is, soon you’ll be seeing Dean referred to everywhere as being a pessimist, instead of as being the optimist he is.
Sure, why run on the issues when you can run by distorting your opponent’s character? And why talk about specifics when you can make vague references to how glorious America is? After all, it’s not like the media is going to call you on any of it.
