Republicanizing Politics

EJ Dionne has been around a while which is why this particular column of his is so curious. He contends that the old Tip O'Neill adage, "All politics are local" is being tipped over this year. By Republicans alone if you read his examples.

The blogosphere has created central repositories of political information — including news of very local developments that would otherwise go unnoticed on the national level — that can speed the flow of intelligence to activists across the nation. And the recruitment of candidates is ever more the job of national party committees, not local officials or organizations.

The result is that the conventional debate about whether congressional elections are primarily local or national in character is both irrelevant and misleading. Even apparently local developments are often orchestrated from afar, and even personal attacks on individual candidates are largely the work of a cadre of Washington-based researchers.

Except for a brief mention of the Maryland Senate race, the examples are Republican. Funny how Lamont in Connecticut doesn't even rate a mention, isn't it?

I'm not buying his line at all here. There has always been national involvement in these kinds of races in modern times. National party support is probably responsible for all but a handful of Washington politicians. It has been everywhere I have lived, anyway. Some of the tools may be different, but the goal is the same as it has ever been. Dionne knows that, I suspect. He just took this as another opportunity to bash Republicans.