Disconnect
I think Obama won the debate. But the most interesting conversation of the evening was the one we didn’t hear – the accusations of terrorist pallin’ and insinuations that Obama is somehow un-American that Palin has been peddling all week and that McCain has amplified in his appearances. This came as a big disappointment in National Review’s The Corner: Said Andy McCarthy:
Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn’t; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he’s qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy [sic] qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.
Good point. You can’t really have it both ways. You either go all-in with the Rovian sleaze, or you try to win on the issues. Contra the talking heads, I don’t think McCain held his fire because of an innate sense of decency. I think he simply realized he couldn’t pull it off in that format.
For that reason, I don’t expect a change in tone on the campaign trail; McCain and Palin will go back to sliming Obama with Ayers, Wright, etc., first thing this morning. But it creates a disconnect – a sense that McCain doesn’t have the balls to slime Obama to his face. That may change in the last debate next week, but it could be too late then.
More hate mail for KP
Wingnut columnist Kathleen Parker, who enraged her readers recently by calling Palin the buffoon she is, will get another load of hate mail for her latest effort:
The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn’t a Muslim or a terrorist, but they’re willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.
But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we’ve already had a glimpse of the Palin effect.The Post’s Dana Milbank reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said, “Sit down, boy.”
McCain may want to call off his pit bull before this war escalates.
Don’t count on it, Kathleen. This is your new Republican Party. It’s no longer enough to paint your opponents as effete, tax-and-spend liberals. Now they must be accused of being directly in league with terrorists if not secret Muslim terrorists themselves. That’s what happens when your party declares a bankruptcy of ideas.
Posted by Betty Cracker on 10/08/08 at 06:21 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • St. McSame • Barack Obama • PUMAs • Sarah Palin •
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