Fear and loathing on the campaign trail. Literally.

Listening to the rhetoric coming out of the McCain camp, you’d wonder if they actually know what century it is.

McCain is conducting an old-fashioned Republican campaign. That is, lots of innuendo and misleading statements; running against the man himself (Obama) and his background (or what they can make people think is his background) rather than the issues.

I realize that lies are one of the strongest weapons in any politician’s arsenal, but McCain has been firing indiscriminately. We keep hearing about Joe the Plumber, William Ayres, "redistributing the wealth," how Obama will raise taxes, increase welfare, and so on endlessly. McCain and Palin keep making these "arguments" and the partisan crowds cheer. And their surrogates, from local politicians to McCain’s wife, from right-wing radio talk show hosts to assorted blue collar workers standing squarely in McCain’s camp, make even nastier attacks; attacks on Obama’s race or on what he might do as President; implications that Obama is hiding something about his birth, his citizenship or his race. (Are there still people who buy this stuff? Apparently so...and they keep coming to McCain rallies.)

They keep making speeches on these topics, keep hitting the same talking points, keep implying the same exaggerations half-truths and outright falsehoods, and the McCain faithful keep lapping it up and applauding and cheering. It plays well on television.

Their problem is that it isn’t playing well in people’s living rooms.

Republicans are running a campaign designed to make voters fear and despise Obama, to make voters think that a vote for Obama is a vote for terrorism or socialism or radicalism or whichever ism they can make people afraid of. What they don’t seem to realize is that people aren’t buying it this time.

We’ve come into a time when people care a lot more about where a candidate stands now than on where his acquaintances stood forty years ago. We care more about what a candidate says than we do about who his father/friends/whatever are or were. To put it simply, we seem (finally) to care more about issues than we do about talking points.

Not that this is entirely one way. For example, a lot of ink has been expended in the last couple of days describing Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, and the amount of money spent to keep her and her family looking good for the cameras. Of course they’re being groomed for the cameras...they’re in front of the cameras!

Am I the only one that noticed that Barack Obama was wearing a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit in the last debate? He looked good. No one is holding it against him that he looked good; Sarah Palin, however, is being dragged through the mud for trying to keep herself (and her family; they’re on camera too) from looking shabby on national television. Who can blame her? Not me, certainly.

But back to the issue...What the Republicans seem unable to learn is that the old "vote-for-me-because-my-opponent-is-scary" kind of campaign doesn’t work any more. It’s not entirely their fault; Republicans had years to prepare for running against Hillary Clinton only to find themselves running an entirely different campaign against an entirely different candidate. Four years ago, hardly anyone believed that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. I’m sure the Republicans had lots of quotable lines ready about her clothing, her shoes, her makeup, her demeanor, and a hundred other things that would have the democrats crying "Foul!" even as they rushed her to have her hair done.

Welcome to Underdogland, Sarah. Have a pleasant stay.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.