RALEIGH – They’ve all tried very hard. Half-a-dozen Republicans, led by Lexington attorney Jim Snyder, have tried. The top three Democratic candidates have tried. The news media, seeking a more exciting race, have tried. Talk show hosts have tried. Grassroots activists have tried.
They’ve all tried to bring Republican Senate candidate Elizabeth Dole down from the lofty perches of nationwide political celebrity into the nitty-gritty world of the rest of us. And they have failed, I am forced to conclude.
Dole’s popularity has scarcely been dented in the past year by charges of “carpetbagging,” of flip-flopping on issues such as gun control and abortion, of being too cozy with former Enron CEO Ken Lay and other corporate fatcats, of being more sickly sweet than Bojangles iced tea.
None of it has really stuck (see http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-263740.html). Her poll numbers remain sky-high. Her national reputation is intact. Her appeal to the national media continues.
Elizabeth Dole is Teflon coated with hand lotion and dipped in motor oil.
As we saw with the 2000 presidential race, an Elizabeth Dole candidacy can been killed – but only by her. I don’t think that any of the main Democratic candidates in next Tuesday’s primary can take her. I think that if Dole is elected, she immediately becomes a national figure and puts North Carolina squarely into the center of national politics (John Edwards has already accomplished half the task on the Democratic side). She’s no replacement for Jesse Helms as a conservative icon, of course, but she won’t be an irrelevant freshman senator, either. She’ll do lots of Sunday morning talk shows and cable chat shows. She’ll be quoted on the news. She’ll be considered a potential Veep right from the start.
She will be, in short, the anti-Hillary. Having little of the baggage of the former first lady, and actually hailing from the state to which she recently relocated to run for Senate, Dole will overshadow the junior senator from New York. This is one reason why D.C. Democrats don’t relish a Dole victory, and helped to draft Erskine Bowles to run.
I’m not saying any of this as a Dole supporter; as a commentator and think-tanker, I don’t get involved in partisan politics. I’m saying this as one who is genuinely awe-struck, and more than a little puzzled, at Dole’s continuing honeymoon with average voters. There is no doubt she strikes a chord with many. And it’s not in a minor key.