More on the Republican Attack Machine. Media Log would never be any more self-referential than absolutely necessary. But Alan Wolfe's excellent piece in the Ideas section of yesterday's Globe reads like the flip side of my recent piece on the down-and-dirty tactics of the modern Republican Party and its allies in the media ("The GOP Attack Machine").

It's heartening that a mainstream, measured liberal such as Wolfe has concluded that the Republicans -- starting with George W. Bush -- have unilaterally shattered the governing consensus necessary to make politics work.

Wolfe seems to think that by sticking to their principles, the Democrats will ensure their own defeat in 2004 -- but that may enable them to build for the future. I'm not so sure that his short-term pessimism is warranted -- just check out the headlines from Iraq and from the economic front on any given day.

But he's right about this: politics is a nasty game, and the Republicans are playing it a lot nastier than the Democrats right now.