Republicans Pack Punch. Democrats Take It. (For Now)

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/weekinreview/12brod.html

ON THE ATTACK
Republicans Pack Punch. Democrats Take It. (For Now)
By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: September 12, 2004


DO Republicans play a rougher game of politics than Democrats?

The question has been tossed around since Vice President Dick Cheney, in apparently unscripted remarks, suggested last week that electing the Democratic ticket in November would invite a devastating terrorist attack. <snip>

"I don't think there's any question they're better at it than we are," said James Carville, the Democratic warrior-consultant who admitted to being envious of his Republican counterparts' merciless brand of campaigning. "But I'm fixing to do what I can to change that slightly."<snip>


Lee Atwater, President George H. W. Bush's chief strategist in 1988, left the battlefield scattered with corpses, including that of the hapless Tom Turnipseed, a South Carolina Congressional candidate in 1980 who had the misfortune of running against one of Mr. Atwater's clients. Mr. Atwater was accused of whispering to reporters that Mr. Turnipseed had undergone psychiatric treatment in college, and when Mr. Atwater was asked about it, he said he would not respond to allegations from someone who had been "hooked up to jumper cables."


<snip>Mr. Clinton and his rapid-response style of campaigning were a throwback to an era of more hard-nosed Democratic politicians. Lyndon Johnson was one of the dirtiest campaigners Texas ever produced. His House and Senate campaigns were legendary for their viciousness, and his presidential campaign advertisement against Barry Goldwater in 1964 of a girl plucking a daisy before a nuclear mushroom cloud makes Mr. Cheney's remarks this week sound like a reading of "The Pet Goat." John and Bobby Kennedy, with their mobster friends, their union muscle and their rum-running father, were hardly pushovers in the contact sport of electoral politics.

<snip>He said there was no tougher player of hardball politics than Mr. Carville, who has been brought on to inject a little steel into the Kerry campaign. "James Carville makes me look like a sissy," Mr. Nofziger said.<snip>