It’s a fairly well-documented fact that one of Republican strategist Karl Rove’s main tactics is to attack an opponent at his strength. Perhaps the best example is the “swift-boating” of John Kerry, an attack on his war record, which was clearly a strength in light of George W. Bush’s wartime “service.”

It worth looking at a more recent canard or talking point, if you will: That the Democrats have no ideas.

For starters, it’s obvious the Democrats have plenty of ideas, on health care, social security, the war on terror, and fiscal responsibility. The Republican “ideas,” such as they are, are cut taxes for the wealthy and “stay the course” in Iraq.

But the larger point is, to the extent that Republicans have ideas, they are wildly out of step with most Americans. This is why Rove’s tactics and those of the right wing echo chamber (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Kristol, et al.) involve not ideas, but deceit. Rather than advance their weirdly bad ideas, they misrepresent the sound liberal ideas that made this country great.

Now, I don’t want to tar all Republicans with that brush; I think there are plenty of truly thoughtful, patriotic Republicans with interesting ideas. You just don’t hear from them nowadays.

In One Party Country LA Times Reporters Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten describe the premium GOP strategists like Rover put on winning. I’ve heard Hamburger in two interviews (haven’t read the book), but what they apparently miss is that the win-at-any-cost approach is corrosive to democracy, because it put the prioriity on winning, not on policy and ideas.

Democracy’s life blood is the exchange of ideas. So when deceit, not honest debate, is the driving force behind campaigns and governance, our democracy is degraded.

In conclusion, here are a couple of rules in following national discussions of policy:

1) the louder a point is being made by the Republican echo chamber, the less likely it is to be true; and
2) It’s easy to tell when Rove is lying: His lips — or George W. Bush’s lips — are moving