Every day Republican supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin do media interviews with the help of a very familiar, yet still unsettling, playbook. Respectable men and women who hold high office and other responsible positions in society are telling talk show hosts and reporters that Barack Obama cannot be trusted. They are saying (with straight faces) that his character and leadership ability are in question. They continue to claim that Obama's "relationship" with Bill Ayers indicates poor judgment at best and a hatred of America at worst.MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews listed the personal attacks by the Republicans against Obama over the last few months. He said that Republicans had tried to paint Obama as a "celebrity;" that he insulted Sara Palin with the "lipstick on a pig comment;" that he's "pals around with terrorists;" that he's "anti-American;" that his tax policy is "socialism;" that "liberals hate real Americans;" and most recently, that Obama is a communist.
Interestingly, whenever journalists call these folks on these claims they always say that this is not the primary message of the McCain campaign, just some additional concerns. They claim that McCain's campaign is centered on his tax policies and the economy, which of course allows them to repeat the claim that Obama is a "socialist" or has "socialist ideas."
Oddly, Republicans continue to throw out the label "liberal" as if it was something Americans would hold against Obama. Anyone who thinks "liberal" is a dirty word is already squarely in the McCain-Palin camp (actually for these folks it's probably considered the Palin-McCain bunker). I would like to see a reporter ask one of these folks why they keep saying Obama is the "most liberal" senator when surveys make clear that -on policies- the majority of Americans are liberals. In other words, the label is supposed to evoke images of a radical element, but it clearly is not being seen that way by swing voters.
A Hardball interview with Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson(NM) provides an excellent example of most of these tactics, as well as one more. This one can only be described as willful misinformation. When talking about the Wall Street collapse Congresswoman Wilson noted the irony in the fact that Americans were blaming Republicans and their candidates for the crisis when (according to Wilson) the Democrats and Barack Obama were responsible for creating the crisis. This observation lead the congresswomen to the conclusion that sometimes "reality doesn't matter." While she was attempting to say that reality (her version at least)was wrongly being ignored by voters, who presumably were being duped by Obama.
What makes this "reality doesn't matter" claim so interesting is that despite its intuitive plausibility to just about everyone when it comes to public opinion, in this election we may have seen it forcefully refuted. It seems to me that, unlike most elections, this one is being characterized by "reality-based" voting preferences. The long accepted premise that "attack campaigning works" is running up against another piece of conventional wisdom, namely that Americans take their politics most seriously when politics hits close to home. The Republican talking points about small government and freeing up "job creators" from government taxes and regulations is only compelling to average voters when they either feel the negative effects of government or are complacent enough to believe these "trickle down" ideological arguments.
The present reality is that American swing voters are scared. They are actually not picky about who helps them. They just want help. No matter who caused what, when Americans need help and they associate voting with those needs, the pro-government party is a shoe-in. This means that the Republicans (right or wrong) cannot win by telling the truth about their economic policy approach. This only leaves one strategy open -change the subject. Ideally, the subject would be terrorism and national security, but until a national security October surprise hits, they have to talk about some other distraction. So like it or not, Republicans have to "cling" to the "character" question, not because they think it will work but because without it they fear a landslide.
The problem with this desperation strategy is not its potential to succeed, but rather its potential to further divide America on racial and cultural lines. While the conservative pundits and politicians understand that their hyperbolic rhetoric is not reasonable, many folks in the Republican base believe it 100%. It is these folks, not swing voters, whose behavior is being impacted by the mudslinging. If the Republican Party continues to let the nation associate it with these lunatics at Palin rallies, they may suffer the same fate as the Democratic Party did in the 70s and 80s when average Americans associated the Democratic Party with radical leftists. Yesterday's Reagan-Democrats might be replaced by tomorrow's Obama-Republicans. Some have already said those immortal words, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."