The little map in the upper right corner has created a terrible weight for the Bush/McCain campaign as the days, and the stock market, tick down. It appears that some elements of the Republican team are starting to panic. This is hardly the way to project seasoned leadership in a time of crisis. Dana Milbank reports today in the Washington Post:
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
More signs of panic and desperation in reporting by HuffPo, and Jack and Jill politics. Update: Kathy has the same story here, in a post I just saw (Oops!). Thanks, Kathy!
Discuss
19 Comments . Leave a comment below.Playing the race card=desperation.
Sarah Palin is being really irresponsible whipping up hatred. What if it spills over into violence?
desperation and panic. Not the virtues of a president.
come here with the cries "Ayres! Terrorist! Rezko!" and flee when confronted with a challenge. They must be looking at the electoral map and crying. I mean, Indiana is in play! One of the reddest of the red states.
Just please try to skip the absurd talking points of the moment, and concentrate on the practical differences between McCain and Obama, such as they may be.
In fact, Obama has taken many of his policy positions from ideas the G.O.P. claims to hold dear. Consider, for example, his assertion that personal responsibility is key:
Anyway, reality-based arguments are your best hope for success anyway.
Those of us who've been through a few of these have been waiting with dread for -- please excuse the expression -- the "Scary Negro" phase of the campaign. Now that it seems they're playing from behind, there's obvious tension in the McCain campaign between wanting to start the Willie Hortonizing now, and waiting for the last moments of the campaign, when there's no time to react.
The good news is this:
With fingers crossed, of course.
Does this sort of thing net them more than a point or two? That won't be enough. These sort of things work better when there is a a smaller margin. This might wind up simply making them lose badly, rather than well, and cost the GOP in down-ticket races.
FWIW, I think it is hard to separate the "Scary Negro" effect of Willie Horton from the "Democrats think that we should give violent criminals a hug, but them an ice cream cone, an apologize for causing them to be criminals" effect of Willie Horton, which was a pretty big weakness of the Democrats up until 1992.
I agree on the first point, but hell-bent seems to be the only option they think they have, regardless the down-ticket downside.
On the second point, you may be one of the few left alive who has difficulty recognizing what went on in that race; in fact, didn't Lee Atwater eventually confess to the whole thing? If the point was that Democrats are "soft on crime" (whatever the hell that means), were there no mug shots of white violent criminals available? Do you think Nixon's "Law and Order" campaign -- in an election where the top three concerns of the American people were Vietnam, Vietnam, and Vietnam -- was about law and order, too?
The question I keep pondering is this: if these are their tactics on October 7th, what will they be on October 27th? They have to kill the next four weeks, and they've already spent their "he's a terrorist!" and "itz the media's fault!" shots. How much more can the rhetorical pressure be raised?
And what do you do when you're out of rhetorical attacks?
a la agents provocateur
Making a deal now? Get the guy to make some assertions and bingo, you win the election. It wouldn't have to have any truth behind it, only has to last 'til election night. A favorite ploy of Dukakis, I'm sure the Republicans aren't above using it.
They should have saved this crap for the last week of the campaign. They are running on fumes now.
and an earlier cycle resulting in more people cementing their vote in their own minds long before Nov 1, late October surprises do less damage than they used to.
I have no idea what the correlation is between early voting states and swing states -- it could be that early voting states aren't swing states thereby eroding my claim. Even if so, I think the latter half -- that people are cementing their opinions earlier than in prior elections due to earlier starts and more media saturation -- does hold true.
I prefer the exposure of the latent inner ugliness during the campaign, really. Bigotry is an animal that slowly dies when it has to live in the light for long enough. It's nastiest and strongest and most violent when it has hidden in the dark for a long time.
I'm guessing we'll have a very subdued last week before the election.
During a Palin rally, according the Washington Post
Kill who? Ayers? Or "that one"? I know the Secret Service is asking this genius that question.
link
brought this to my attention today. Is TheBush Administration, namely Condoleeza Rice, palling around with terrorist? I mean Gadafi is reformed and all.
Recently, I've been playing Chocolate City by Parliament Funkadelic repeatedly, only because I feel that it would really piss Republicans off.
I am adding it to my list of blogs I read. Please check ours out too.
http://blueoregonwhistleblower...
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