I’m reading Richard Wolffe’s article on Senator Barack Obama and his team in Newsweek. Wolffe is doing a good job in saying that Senator John McCain and Obama are getting ready to face each other. Obama is getting ready for an onslaught from the right. The article was going along nicely, until I get to this paragraph.
“The McCain campaign is now poring over Obama’s record, looking for weaknesses that can be exposed without race-baiting or hitting below the belt. They want to brand Obama as a “superduper liberal who is out of the mainstream,” says one McCain adviser who did not wish to be identified discussing internal campaign strategy.”
It is at this point I fall out of my chair laughing. Let me get this straight, Republicans are going to try to paint a Democratic candidate as liberal and out of the mainstream? Oh, and this is so top secret that the McCain adviser didn’t want to named. I’m still laughing.
In every major campaign from Maine to Florida and from California to Alaska, Republicans have tried to paint Democrats as liberals who are elitist and out of the mainstream. Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist, wrote a great book in 2006 called “Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show.” Why would Richard Wolffe write about it as if it is a secret? This is standard operating procedure from Republicans. If a Democrat can’t fight off this now-lame and tired attack, he or she shouldn’t run for any office more important that dog catcher.
