ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, October 14 2010

Scare tactics are failing the Democrats
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Election Day is less than two weeks away, and Democratic leaders are getting desperate. Their poll numbers keep sinking, their messages keep changing and the only constant in their quest to cling to power is a drumbeat of bad news.

This week brought a new barrage of blows for a party struggling to convince voters that it deserves to retain congressional control. A Gallup report released Monday found that one in 10 Americans is now unemployed. A Politico analysis released Tuesday found that 99 Democrat-held House seats now are vulnerable to Republican takeover. And given that a recent CNN poll found voters roughly split in their estimation of whether Barack Obama or George W. Bush was the better president, Obama's campaign-trail tick of blaming his failures on Bush looks more than a little misguided.

It seems that the Democrats are in for "a thumping," as our former president would say. Facing an onslaught of voter outrage and finding little to show for their reckless spending spree over the past two years, the members of the Party of No Results have only one hope left for Nov. 2. They must convince voters that the conservative candidates barreling toward victory in states across America are spooky, silly or mean.

There are, no doubt, a few eyebrow-raising characters on the ballot this year. It's unsurprising that some newcomers inspired to run by a grassroots movement as unpolished and decentralized as the Tea Party are scrappier and more eccentric than the career politicians they seek to unseat. In a few cases — Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and her "I am not a witch" ad comes to mind — their personal controversies have overwhelmed their political message.

Yet for all the mainstream media attention devoted to covens and Aqua Buddha, most conservative candidates making inroads this year are connecting with voters precisely because of their ordinariness. Their lack of professional handlers or teleprompter-enabled eloquence makes many of them more attractive to voters who believe that the last thing Washington needs is another smooth-talking Beltway operator. And their concerns — about fiscal irresponsibility, the unchecked growth of government and the rise of a ruling class that promotes values antithetical to those of most Americans — resonate in our center-right nation.

Conservatism may spook media elites, but polls suggest that voters find the policies of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate far more frightening than Tea Party calls for fiscal restraint. There is a reason that Republicans routinely tout their conservative credentials on the campaign trail while Democrats rarely mouth the "L" word. A Gallup poll conducted last summer found that 42 percent of Americans today describe themselves as either very conservative or conservative, while only 20 percent describe themselves as liberal or very liberal.

Democratic operatives apparently have noticed that the spooky label does not fit many of their foes, which is why some have defaulted to the "conservatives are mean" trope. In this year of the conservative woman, they have given their mantra a new, gendered twist. The Republican "mama grizzlies" generating excitement from California to South Carolina are mean girls, they say. The proof: These candidates are stingy with taxpayer money; when their male opponents attack them, they attack back; and in positions on everything from Obamacare to abortion, they show an appalling lack of deference to the sisterhood.

Never mind that this same sisterhood denounced Sarah Palin as a traitor to her sex and skewered her for everything from her hairstyle to her mothering skills when she emerged on the national scene two years ago. Or that the sisterhood made nary a peep when California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown shrugged off questions in last week's debate about a conversation in which his staffer suggested calling opponent Meg Whitman a prostitute — the actual term used was harsher — and Brown answered, "I'm going to use that."

The important thing to remember is that conservatives — and especially strong, principled, outspoken conservative women — are scary. Or mean. They don't mind their manners. They refuse to defer to their betters — in the White House, the newsroom or the sisterhood. They are brash, tough-minded fighters.

Unfortunately for their rivals, that's exactly what millions of fed-up taxpayers say Washington needs right now. No wonder Democrats are desperate.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.