Fineman: Democrats take a page from a GOP playbook...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9972335/

Working the 'wedge' on the White House
Democrats take a page from a GOP playbook, and test Republican loyalties

By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor

WASHINGTON – For Democrats, the outside-the-Beltway strategic lessons from this week’s elections are clear: run as a moderate or run on competence (or both), and surf to victory on voters’ disdain for President Bush and his party’s corrosive ad tactics.

But there’s another Democratic strategy under development, this one inside the Beltway, and it bears watching: a divide-and-conquer approach that is making life miserable for Bush and the GOP.

Call it Wedge Strategy 2.0. I saw it in operation the other day when I happened to drop by Sen. Harry Reid’s press office in the Capitol just as his press secretary, Jim Manley, was spinning his bosses’ latest line of attack: that “all roads” of controversy lead to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The focus is on Cheney,” Manley said happily, “and you can quote me on that!” Cheney and Halliburton, Cheney and torture policy, Cheney and the CIA leak, Cheney and pre-war intelligence, Cheney and global warming….