"What Democrats are up against in today's GOP"

Gene Lyons writing in the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette via The Smirking Chimp (check out the comments) goes over the GOP "noise machine" again and provides yet another example of how it operates: "Last week, I wrote that Howard Dean, recently elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, appears capable of giving his party a wake-up call because he's scrappy, smart and fearless. Hence, the GOP party line on Dean is that he's a snobbish elitist and an advocate of cultural decadence. Also crazy, because, as we all know, anybody who sees through Bush must be consumed by anger and hatred."