White House Campaign Against Dissent

As the Washington Post reports in a detailed article today, the White House has begun to respond to any criticism the way it did in the campaign, by impugning the source of criticism and using campaign-style tactics. The clearest indication of this was the response to Rep. John Murtha's (D-Penn.) call for withdrawal from Iraq within 6 months. The response was a nasty smear from the press secretary's office. From Reuters:

"White House spokesman Scott McClellan fired back that Murtha had endorsed a 'surrender' policy advocated by 'extreme' liberals such as filmmaker Michael Moore, seen in Republican circles as a dangerous radical."

Scott McClellan is calling a conservative hawkish Democrat who supported the war, but has recently changed his mind an "extreme liberal". All of these tactics are designed to try to stem any further defections from the conservative side in Congress, in particular, who are weighing the impact of supporting the White House on their chances for re-election in the 2006 mid-term elections. And while Bush, Cheney and their assorted spokespeople can claim that they support the right of dissent as 'patriotic', anyone who uses their right is labeled a traitor, a liberal and as unpatriotic as those 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys', the label for the French prior to the war. The Bush team knows that even their base has started to desert them and is resorting to pandering to the hard right as they did during the 2004 campaign.