From Opinion Journal:

Howard Fineman's Nightmare
Politics is about to get ugly, Newsweek's Howard Fineman warns:

The conventional notion here is that Democrats want to "nationalize" the 2006 elections--dwelling on broad themes (that is, the failures of the Bush Administration)--while the Republicans will try to "localize" them as individual contests that have nothing to do with, ahem, the goings on in the capital.

That was before the GOP situation got so desperate. The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a Democratic Congress would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.

Rather than defend Bush, Rove will seek to rally the Republicans' conservative grassroots by painting Democrats as the party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness. That's where the national message money is going to be spent.

This prompts an amusing observation from erstwhile blogger Steven Den Beste, in a letter to Power Line:

One of my favorite B movies from the early 1960's is "The Raven," . . . starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre. . . .

Lorre, Karloff, and Price play wizards, with Lorre being by far the weakest and least powerful of the three. At one point the three of them are eating together, and Lorre gets drunk and challenges Karloff to a magic duel.

Karloff's magic is so much more powerful than Lorre's that he is able to foil each of Lorre's attacks with just a simple gesture of his hands, leading Lorre to mutter those immortal words, "You're defending yourself, you coward!" . . .

I keep running into this from lefties. They criticize others (us), and if in turn they're criticized suddenly they squeal about "censorship!" and "McCarthyism!" Their freedom of speech demands that we not say anything in our own defense, let alone actually point out their problems.

And so it is here. Howard Fineman is deathly afraid that the Republicans will point out what the Democrats actually stand for. How dare those scheming Republicans actually defend themselves!

Though in Fineman's description, Republicans aren't defending themselves but "waging war" and "painting Democrats" in unflattering ways. How come, though, the Republicans are being negative and nasty, while Democrats are merely "dwelling on broad themes" when they talk of "the failures of the Bush Administration"?