Target: Bush

A report by Adam Nagourney in today's NYT states the obvious. Democrats are targeting Bush as the November midterms approach:

From Rhode Island to New Mexico, from Connecticut to Tennessee, President Bush is emerging as the marquee name in this fall’s Congressional elections — courtesy not of his Republican Party but of the Democrats.

A review of dozens of campaign commercials finds that Mr. Bush has become the star of the Democrats’ advertisement war this fall. He is pictured standing alone and next to Republican senators and members of Congress, his name intoned by ominous-sounding announcers. Republican candidates are damned in the advertisements by the number of times they have voted with Mr. Bush in Congress.

According to the Democrats' meta-strategy, local races, including those for the House and Senate, should be referendums on Bush. In other words, in 2006, all politics should be national politics.

Here's how Slate's John Dickerson put it the other day in a piece on Chafee's primary win in Rhode Island: "Democrats want November to be about the unpopular George Bush and Republican majority. Republicans want it to be about local issues."

Which, when you think about it, is an admission on the Republicans' part of the failure of the Bush presidency (and if Iraq in particular). This isn't just about bad poll numbers. It's about bad policies, policies that have turned much of the party against the president (as on torture and tribunals, for example).

Look for races to get dirty as Republicans run against both Bush and the Democrats -- that is, where they haven't gotten dirty already (as in Rhode Island, for example, where, to quote Dickerson again, "[n]othing brings local focus to a race better than a knee to the groin").

Knees to the groin.

There's your Republican campaign strategy for 2006. (Although, like The (liberal) Girl Next Door, I'm not sure why anyone would vote Republican anyway.)