Sad, but true

Steve Soto has a perceptive comment at the Left Coaster:

In the immediate aftermath of the Minnesota bridge collapse, one of the first talking points to come out from the White House and the GOP spin machine was a charge that Democrats were trying to take political advantage of the tragedy by talking about past GOP under funding at the state and national level. It suddenly became off-limits for the Democrats to point out that Governor Tim Pawlenty and George W. Bush had borne full responsibility for the sorry state of Minnesota’s highways because of their mutual and well-documented insistence that user taxes and taxes of any kind not be raised to maintain or improve infrastructure, and that such needs be met through the current inadequate levels of funding.

This tactic of preemptively deflecting politically damaging attacks by smearing your opponent for taking political advantage of a situation is a part of the Rove/Luntz playbook, and has been in use for well over a decade as a defense mechanism. Whenever you hear any Republican warn Democrats about “taking political advantage” of a tragedy it means that they know they are responsible for the tragedy. It is a tactic they used to defend themselves immediately after Katrina, and it is a warning from the same people who politicized Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, and every terror threat warning of the last six years.

And yet our national Democratic leaders always seem to be neutered by it.

Unfortunately, this is absolutely true. All the Rethuglicans have to do is growl a bit, and the Dems go slinking off to hide in a corner. And, they wonder why people call them weaklings.