Bloggers target Democrats in 'Bush Dog' campaign

WASHINGTON — Mark Pera has a standard attack line against his incumbent congressional opponent, one he loves enough to repeat four times in a 10-minute interview.

"Every time Bush needs a vote," the Democratic attorney from Western Springs, Ill., says, "he turns to Dan Lipinski and gets it."

Independent ratings show Lipinski, a second-term Democrat, actually voted with the Republican president less than 20 percent of the time this year (down from about half the time in 2006). But he's backed the presidential position on at least one key vote over the Iraq war — and he's suggested war opponents are better served by working across party lines than by sending withdrawal timelines out for repeated presidential vetoes.

That, in the new Democratic Congress, is enough to draw Lipinski an Internet-fueled primary challenge from the left.

Frustrated with Democrats' failure to thwart Bush on Iraq and other issues after winning House and Senate control in 2006, Internet activists deride Lipinski and about 40 other Democratic members of Congress as "Bush Dogs" for their votes on the war and warrantless wiretapping. The activists have targeted those lawmakers with attack ads, scathing blog posts and, in Lipinski's case, financial help for his primary foe. Pera outraised Lipinski last quarter, a rarity for a challenger, thanks in part to the $30,000 he recently raised online over a two-week period.

Democratic bloggers say they're prodding Lipinski and other "Bush Dogs" to support key party principles. Lipinski and other aisle-crossing members of Congress worry the bloggers are trying to drive bipartisanship off Capitol Hill.

It's an ageless debate with new technology. Primary fights often turn on the ideological divisions between small sets of voters. Jim Leach, a centrist former Republican congressman from Iowa, who now directs the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, estimates that only .54th of American voters decide each party's primary — the most active of the activists, liberal on the left and conservative on the right.

"The center of American politics, in Congress, is exceptionally weak," Leach said.

Lipinski styles himself a centrist — pro-union, anti-abortion, keen on alternative energy — and spent much of his summer pushing what he called a centrist plan for Iraq: putting into law the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Those include withdrawing U.S. combat troops from the country, but with no timelines for doing it. Democrats and Republicans co-sponsored the bill; in September, Lipinski touted it at a Chicago event with Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.

"He picked the path of being effective and actually delivering for his district," Kirk said.

In the spring, Lipinski voted in favor of one measure that tied war funding to a timeline for troop withdrawal. After Bush vetoed that bill, Lipinski voted against another bill that would have begun withdrawal in 90 days. He said Bush would have vetoed that bill, too — and that the time had come to look for less ambitious ways to change course in Iraq that could gain Republican support.

"If we are going to force the president to change his policy, we're going to have to reach out to some Republicans," Lipinski said in an interview. Later, he added: "A lot of these people on the blogs, they believe if you try hard enough, you can end the war tomorrow. That is not the case."

Bloggers criticized Lipinski's Iraq strategy and his Democratic credentials. Matt Stoller, the editor of openleft.com and the architect of the Bush Dog campaign, proclaimed Lipinski the first "Bush Dog" to be targeted in a primary by the "netroots." In an interview, he called the congressman "not a good Democrat."

"Bush has made it very clear that he's not withdrawing from Iraq, and he's not going to sign anything that would lead to withdrawal from Iraq," Stoller said. "Either Lipinski knows this, and he's misleading everyone, or he's stupid."

While many of the "Bush Dogs" hail from Republican-leaning districts, Lipinski's traditionally votes Democratic. That particularly galls some of the other bloggers who have joined Stoller in supporting Pera.

Lipinski votes "like a right-wing nut," said Howie Klein, who runs downwithtyrrany.com and is one of the leaders of Blue America, a political action committee founded by bloggers. But, he added, "He's not in some radical right district."

Pera has courted bloggers — and donors in the district — with a message that mixes Iraq, abortion rights and leftover resentment from Lipinski's installation as the Democratic nominee for the seat in 2004. (Dan Lipinski replaced his father, former Rep. William Lipinski, who retired after winning the primary; Pera has criticized the elder Lipinski's post-congressional dealings, including spending by a charity he operates.)

Pera has amassed nearly 1,800 contributors online alone — Lipinski had fewer than 100 total contributors all of last quarter — and pays five campaign staffers. He plans to start television advertising this month. Lipinski's reports show no campaign workers to speak of. He says he'll get his team up and running in the next couple of weeks — and that his critics misunderstand the more conservative nature of his Democratic-leaning district.

Stoller says there's a "reasonable chance" Pera could knock off Lipinski, despite his incumbency and the lingering effects of his father's name and political organization. Another pro-Pera blogger, Larry Handlin of archpundit.com, pegs Pera's chances at 25 percent.

Kirk, the Republican congressman, gives Lipinski much better odds. "Netroots generally always fail," he said. "We all remember the administration of President (Howard) Dean."