By Timur Abimanyu, SH.

MH

THE WASHINGTON POST

GOP's election strategy lets others do its dirty work

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Monday, October 18, 2010

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. The Republican Party is running a three-level campaign this year that
gives its candidates a wealth of advantages -- in flexibility, deniability and determination. At
the first level are the party's candidates, who can be as reasonable or as angry, as moderate or as
conservative, as their circumstances require.Next come the outside groups that refuse to
disclose their donor lists. They are doing the dirty work of pounding their Democratic
opponents in commercials for which no one is accountable. The Republican candidates can
shrug an innocent "Who, me?" Deniability is a wonderful thing.

And then, on the far right, Glenn Beck and his allies cast President Obama as the central figure
in a conspiracy against America itself, fueling participation by the most extreme 10 percent or
15 percent of the electorate.Their crackpot ideas, as the historian Sean Wilentz documented in
the New Yorker recently, originated in the 1950s and '60s, in the paranoid theorizing of the
John Birch Society. But whereas responsible conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr.
denounced the Birchers and the rest of the lunatic fringe back then, Republicans this time are
riding the radical wave. In some cases (think Sharron Angle in Nevada), the extremists are their
standard-bearers.

It's quite brilliant in its way, and judging by the polls, it's working out rather nicely for the
Republicans. They are also profiting from the discontent bred by an economic downturn that
began on their watch.

It's strange to observe this process in New Hampshire, a state whose voters are famously
engaged and generally moderate. Those voters are also partially immunized against the power
of television advertising, accustomed from their presidential primary to television screens filled
with political messages of all kinds.
Kelly Ayotte was all charm and reasonableness as she worked her way through the luncheon
crowd at a meeting of New England's largest Rotary Club at the Red Hook Brewery here last
week.

In her brief address to the assembled business people and professionals, Ayotte, the former
state attorney general and now Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, offered the usual
Republican criticisms of a Washington that "has been spending too much money" and "not
focusing on getting our economy back on track." She committed to "lower taxes on small
business and less regulation" but also pledged not to be a partisan figure. "Often, I'll be bucking
my own party," she promised.Frank Guinta, the Republican House nominee, was also the soul
of equanimity when it was his turn to speak. He, too, stood foursquare against mindless
partisanship while sticking to his party's message on taxes, spending and jobs.Rep. Paul Hodes,
Ayotte's Democratic opponent, could not attend the event, but Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, the
incumbent Democrat whom Guinta hopes to defeat, minced no words in bravely defending tax
increases on upper-bracket earners before a crowd that, judging from its questions, included a
great many of them.

"We all have a responsibility to do what we can to get out of this debt," she said. And she
stoutly defended her vote for health-care reform, asking the crowd if it really wanted to repeal
the new law's consumer protections or its tax credit to help small businesses buy insurance.You
would never know that, away from the friendly Rotarian civic moment worthy of Tocqueville,
Hodes was being pounded on the air by one of this year's big outside conservative spenders,
American Crossroads. "The guy just can't tell the truth," one ad declares, citing the state's
leading conservative newspaper. For her part, Shea-Porter has been hit by the pious-sounding
Revere America group for her support of "Obamacare." The ad warns ominously, and with no
basis: "Your right to keep your own doctor may be taken away."

Hodes estimates that he has been battered by $4 million in outside ads. In an interview, he
condemns "the idea that corporations and third-party interests can flood our airwaves with
millions of dollars without our knowing who they are." But he gamely predicts that
sophisticated New Hampshire voters are "less susceptible to the garbage being thrown at them."
What's striking is that both Hodes and Shea-Porter are unafraid to embrace their votes for
Obama's program, which makes you wonder if their party and the administration would be in
better shape now if both had long ago embarked on a systematic defense of their actual record.
As it is, these Democrats and scores like them elsewhere face Republican opponents who can
be calmly affable, knowing they have behind them oodles of secret cash and a far right that sees
Nov. 2 as Armageddon. ejdionne@washpost.com

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