There's a poignant scene in 'The Godfather' in which mobster novitiate Michael, reflecting on a proposed accommodation with the opposition, says to his criminal paterfamilias: "Won't this be seen as a sign of weakness?" To which wearied, mentoring Vito says: "It is a sign of weakness."
Michael acquiesced for a strategic while, quietly solidified his forces, then merrily went on to garrote and blast his way to power and absolute dominance of the rackets.
The perfect metaphor.
Some saw the GOP as weakened, perhaps even chastised over humiliating revelations that its family-values leadership had swapped the sexual predation of boys for one measly, reliable House seat. Daily scenes of Iraq's carnage -- a hellish situation abetted by Republican Congressional support of "stay the course" -- didn't help.
So what was to be done?
Lay low, solidify the button men, then strike without conscience. Any ethically void, tasteless means to a power-retention end is fair game.
The modern GOP's chief and most effective maneuver in digging its way out of self-dug holes has always been the jujitsu tactic of turning the tables. Whenever, for example, a staggeringly apparent charge of moral bankruptcy or sexual perversion is made against the Republican-pol darlings of Christian-right rectitude, you're sure to be educated that their bankruptcy or perversion ain't nothin' compared to the opposition's despicable slime.
No rational defenses, no mea culpas for their outed sins; just mountainous countercharges that the other guys, soon to be sleeping with the fishes, smell like them, too.
This politicking stench has risen to such heights that even the Washington Post, which for years has suppressed reporting the obvious as a vaccine against the spitting conservative venom of "liberal bias," has taken note. Hence on today's front page -- not, mind you, the editorial page -- is the observation that although "negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's [GOP] version" is an especially noxious, Frankensteinian creation "filled with allegations of" -- what else? -- Democrats' "moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion."
Wisconsin Democrat "Ron Kind pays for sex!" New York Democrat Michael Arcuri "us[ed] taxpayer dollars for phone sex." Ohio Democrat Ted Strickland "protect[ed] a former aide who was convicted in 1994 on a misdemeanor indecency charge," claim a few GOP ads running.
Another Wisconsin Democrat, Steve Kagen, associates with "a convicted serial killer and child rapist." "In two dozen congressional districts, a political action committee supported by a white Indianapolis businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, is running ads saying Democrats want to abort black babies. A voice says, 'If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout de suite, no questions asked.'"
Perhaps most famously (just to date, anyway), the Republican National Committee coughed up a Klan hairball in accusing black Democrat Harold Ford of preferring miscegenational sex. "That ad has been pulled, but the RNC has a new one saying Ford 'wants to give the abortion pill to schoolchildren.'"
The latest is that Reagan Democrat Jim Webb -- recipient of the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts -- is now under attack by Senator George Allen -- student-deferment recipient -- for writing dirty books.
There is no sewer, no pigsty, no circle of hell to which the GOP's interchangeable Roves and Mehlmans won't travel for a one-point uptick.
None of this is to say that Democrats don't occasionally launch objectionable footage themselves. Yet, as the Post points out, "most harsh Democratic attacks have focused on the policies and performance of the GOP majority." Imagine that. Political campaigns about policies and performance.
Besides, if Dems tried replicating the GOP's cesspool, they'd screw it up. It just isn't in them. Some atavistic or 1960s remnant of human decency inhibits the full flowering of their bad selves, a most unfortunate trait in would-be political hit men but quite fortunate for the politically sober.
If the GOP's slime machine prevails this fall, watch out in 2008. A squeaker by swill will only lend encouragement -- like they need that.