I have long faulted the McCain campaign’s inability to develop a consistent set of attacks against Barack Obama, one that would paint a coherent enough picture of the Democratic nominee for the Republican attacks to stick.
After all, who is the GOP’s Barack Obama? An inexperienced and naive ingenue, a good old tax-and-spend liberal or a dangerous radical who “pals around with terrorists?” For months, the McCain campaign has been going down all those paths, hoping one would stick. But these different Obamas don’t really fit together, and the GOP has not fully committed to an attack enough for Obama to be damaged. (The only time it did so was in late July/early August, when the celebrity ads noticeably tightened the race.)
But over the past few days, Republicans have raised their attacks to a whole new level, and, through the new extremism of the GOP’s rhetoric, disparate threads are being connected under the general rubric of anti-Americanism.
Consider the sheer number of high-profile Republicans who have accused Obama or his supporters of being anti-American this week. Michelle Bachmann’s rant was truly remarkable, but what is truly jaw-dropping is that it came just a day after Sarah Palin praised North Carolina as one of the “pro-America parts of the country” and a day before Nancy Pfotenhauer asserted that McCain was winning Real Virginia. Could these incidents truly be gaffes, or do they reveal the course the McCain campaign has chosen to pursue over the last 20 days?
But if Joseph McCarthy’s crusade and the GOP’s recent efforts to make Democrats look unpatriotic had to do with national security, the McCain campaign came to realize that Ayers-like accusations were not breaking through the coverage of the financial crisis. So how can Republicans attack Obama’s economic policies in a way that still makes him look like an unknown risk rather than the familiar figure of the tax-and-spend liberal? Out comes the S-word:
“At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives. They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”
That was John McCain today in his weekly radio address. The Republican nominee also called Obama’s tax policies “welfare” (in what I suggested Thursday is his most explicit attempt yet to racialize the campaign). McCain and his surrogates have been attacking Obama’s “redistributionist” mentality for days now by using Obama’s conversation with Joe the Plumber and his saying “spread the wealth around.”
It’s not just Ayers or his disrespect for troops. By calling Obama’s economic policies “socialist,” Republicans are now aiming to make Obama’s economic policies look un-American as well.
This was most explicitly articulated in Bachmann’s MSNBC appearance yesterday, when the Minnesota Republican conflated the words “liberal,” “left-wing” and “un-American,” thus labeling most Democratic members of Congress with all three epithets. But Palin’s comments have to be understood in the same context: not only do “pro-America” parts of the country support the troops and wear the flag pin, they also reject socialism and redistribution of wealth, policies that are not only economically flawed but also foreign.
Remember that Joe the Plumber wasn’t just concerned that his taxes might rise, he was concerned that such a hike would betray the country’s traditions. He asked Obama, “Do you believe in the American dream?”
So there we have it, the McCain campaign’s closing argument. It is more powerful than anything Republicans have tried since they the celebrity ads because it answers the main challenge the GOP is facing this year: convince voters that, however desperately they want to vote for a Democrat, they shouldn’t consider this candidate. And Obama the Socialist is no longer Obama the Democrat, nor for that matter Obama the liberal; he becomes something unfamiliar that voters shouldn’t trust.
This is not to say that the strategy will succeed (or that it is succeeding). For one, we are 17 days from the election, not the time a campaign wants to reinvent its attack meme. There hasn’t been much suggestion up until this week that Obama’s economic policies were radical. Expensive, maybe, but certainly not radical. If the GOP wanted to implement this angle of attack, it should have planted the seeds weeks ago.
It will be especially difficult to effectively push this attack because of the financial disparity between the two campaigns. Obama has enough money to drown McCain’s ads, and it is Obama’s campaign that has been hammering its opponent’s economic policies and his health care plan over the past few weeks. In fact, Obama’s ads have done their best to make him appear as anti-Left as anti-conservative, with one of his first health care ad bashing “government-run health care” as hard as McCain’s system.
Third, this is a strategy that can very easily drift so far that it backfires. It is risky business to build your campaign on attacking your opponent’s patriotism, especially when McCain now needs to convince Democrats and independents to change sides. Bachmann and Palin’s comments certainly do not attract positive attention for the campaign and they are likely to turn off independents. Yet, how do you get your message across without going overboard in the space of 17 days? That’s just one of the many problems the McCain campaign will have to resolve as soon as possible.
It is astounding how Republicans have made it impossible to have an adult conversation about taxes. And this situation will be deeply destructive unless more of us in the public start growing up and taking our responsibilities as citizens seriously.
Under Obama’s proposal, no one would be paying more income tax than he or she paid under the Clinton administration. And that tax plan gets tagged with the “socialist” epithet? That plan is subjected to derision and booed at Republican rallies?
In the meantime, McCain and Palin go on about their plans to continue tax cuts for everyone, including the mega-wealthy who certainly don’t need it (and, in the case of Warren Buffett, don’t want it) and some of the most profitable corporations on the planet, and still maintain the ludicrous claim that they’ll balance the budget in four years. But we’re not close to paying our national bills now, Bush/Palin have not proposed any significant spending cuts, and they’re proposing reducing tax rates. Hard for me to see how that will balance the budget, especially when the next few years are unlikely to see substantial economic growth that supply-siders use to justify ever decreasing tax rates.
Since the last tax increases on the wealthy in the early 90s under Clinton, we have had nothing but tax cuts. After 15 years of tax cuts, the slightest increase on one portion of the population is demonized. But the idea that we can have indefinite tax cuts and still have a functioning society is surely absurd on its face.
Our political leaders, instead of demonizing taxes, need to reframe our relationship with our government. The government doesn’t just decide to tax us and take our money; we, through our government, are supposed to tax ourselves to pay for the programs we say we want. They’re not “the government’s” programs, they’re our programs. And they’re our taxes, and it’s our debt.
Until we reestablish our responsibility to actually pay for the solutions to our social problems or our social needs, we’ll continue to live in a fantasy world where we can just cut taxes with no consequences. It’s easy to run on tax cut after tax cut. But it’s simply an unsustainable policy, and will eventually be disastrous for the nation.
“Could these incidents truly be gaffes, or do they reveal the course the McCain campaign has chosen to pursue over the last 20 days?”
They must be gaffes; even a campaign as poorly run as the McCain campaign would not go out and deliberately trash the voters they need to attract to win. The women; and strangely they are all women; who made these statements seemed truely unaware of the impact of what they were saying.
I think; and truely hope; that the McCain will see the writing on the wall and decide to close the campaign in an honorable fashion.
Someone please tell me if Michelle Bachman can be defeated,as well as Marcia Blackburn of Tenn?
Lane,
I have never heard of Blackburn mentioned as vulnerable, but Bachmann certanily is. Her seat is rated lean Republican in my ratings.
Obama raised $150 million in September and gained 680,000 new donors. General Powell endorses Obama - both great pieces of news and certainly give Obama a good day or two of coverage.
Dsimon;
The GOP does not want to have an adult conversation about taxes, or for that matter they don’t want to have a conversation on anything that matters to the American voter. In order to have a conversation you have got something to tell. At this point there is nothing that they can say that can convince the electorate of the wisdom of voting republican. At this point they seem to be trying to minimize the damage, by appealing to the most radical and extreme elements of their coalition; all this talk of socialism and radicalism that you see so hysterically put forward now is directed at the base, not the independents or the Democrats. They need that 40-45% in order to stay solid and come out and vote in order to minimize loses in the senate and the house! Remember Bob Dole on 1996. During the final two weeks of the campaign Dole worked very hard to try to minimize the disaster and protect the “down ballot” ticket. Regardless of the message, how does McCain wins if he can hardly hold on to red states? The campaign is being waged now in NC, VA, CO, NV, FL, ND, WV and OH. All red states. IW and NM are goners. That and not the national number is the telling story of this election. Do you see the surge in support that could put McCain over the top coming? I don’t!
Taniel or anyone else;
As predicted the national polls are closing in these final days of the race, yet the state polls remain steady for Obama or in many cases are moving in his direction. How do we understand this contradiction if there is one?
Fritz, zogby closed by a point, but diageo and research 2000 are steady and rasmussen and gallup’s traditional likely voters have Obama moving ahead by one and gallup’s new likely voters has obama moving up by three. It will take a few days to see whether there really is tightening or not.
Still tracking polls can tighten while swing states do not. This could be explained by the amount of advertising.
Good analysis. Colin Powell just endorsed Obama and criticized his own party.
The GOP, esp. Michelle Bachbachmann, McCain, and Palin, are a bunch of old, desperate, nonsenscial dogs that know how to bark in order to remain relevant to the race and somehow manage to win. They can use a saw to cut America into Real America and Unreal America as much as Todd Palin wants to cut America into 49 states. The GOP has become so divisive that the world will see it as the main source of America’s decadence, whether it is true or not. They are the type of party that loath diplomacy and espouse a culture of division and hypocrisy.
Colin Powell’s extended comments on MTP were an eloquent repudiation of the nasty, nativist turn the GOP and McCain have taken. David Brooks’ comments on Stephanopoulos, along with the defection of Chris Buckley and the critiques of people like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker, further confirm that there is a belated recognition amongst conservative intellectuals that they are at risk of being devoured by the anti-intellectual bigots to whom McCain and Palin are increasingly appealing. There may be a battle royale in the cards for the GOP.
But Obama and the Dems face their own issues. If Obama wins - still a big if, IMO - his next challenge will be gravitating away from traditional Democratic centrifugal forces. Obama has a philosophy of government and political progress that wants to look beyond the traditional modalities of government that have become embedded in both parties, and in this case, significantly in the Democratic party. If the election trends hinted at in the polls actually materialize, his next big battle will be with Democratic traditionalists in Congress. Their style of government, and the notion that it must respond with legislation and money to every perceived problem, is at odds with his view of the world. (Matt Bai has an interesting piece in today’s NYT mag section that explores this strain of thinking, while discussing the challenge he faces in attracting traditional white male voters in rural America.)
The real change that Obama wants to implement is a change in the way we think about government and what it can or must do. The combination of an economic downturn, a financial crisis and a more conventionally liberal Democratic caucus in the House and Senate may make that difficult or impossible.
I forgot to mention something, Tanile. I read somewhere on the Internet saying that the national budget deficit will soear past $1 trillion and might even reach billions of dollars more under McCain’s tax plan, as fact checkers have noted. Obama needs to air this fact as an ad and blast the GOP’s collective a**.
But Obama and the Dems face their own issues. If Obama wins - still a big if, IMO - his next challenge will be gravitating away from traditional Democratic centrifugal forces. Obama has a philosophy of government and political progress that wants to look beyond the traditional modalities of government that have become embedded in both parties, and in this case, significantly in the Democratic party. If the election trends hinted at in the polls actually materialize, his next big battle will be with Democratic traditionalists in Congress. Their style of government, and the notion that it must respond with legislation and money to every perceived problem, is atodds with his view of the world.
You have got some very intriguing perspective, zoot. I’d believe Obama has always been a centrist Democrat and has articulated his positions as such. And I think for him to deal with his party’s traditional base makes him look like someone willing to stand up to his party and possibly endear him to moderate and even some conservative Republicans. I also think Bill Clinton governed mostly as a centrist president, though some of his policies angered traditional GOP conservatives.
If Obama resists his party’s core base (which I expect to happen), he will be seen by Republican not as “extremely liberal” that McCain tried to paint him, but as someon willing to work across the board with all parties, and in effect, someone who worried about America at large than party politics. This is a good thing — being a centrist may be difficult, but it is a good, middle-of-the-road strategy. With a centrist presidency, Obama might attract reliably Republican states in his future reelection bid, should he win the presidency next month.
I get confused. When I read Poliico.com, in the the top of the site it has Obama 52%-McCain 42%. In my arithmitic that 10 points.
Isn’t that a great lead? I leave it to you learned folk to explain to this poltical neophyte.