Architect of mendacity MC Rove graces today's Murdoch Street Journal, dispensing his peculiar wisdom on the shape of current and future electoral campaigns. In one fell Machiavellian swoop, Rove explains that TV ads are nowhere near as useful in reaching potential voters as are online communities, that Huckabee's campaign fell because he only appealed to religious zealots, and that the main reason Guiliani lost was all that losing he did:
- Win early somewhere or run darned close. Rudy Giuliani's novel strategy was to ignore the results of the first six contests but win the seventh. You can avoid an early state or two, but staying out of more early contests suggests to voters a candidate is uncomfortable competing. In politics, like sports, winning builds on itself -- and so does losing.
Wow, Karl. You might have also mentioned that with a little dumb luck, any idiot can successfully alternate for years between pointing out the obvious and simply telling obvious lies, and people will call him a genius.
But so far he's only talking about Republicans, so it hardly merits discussion. Then, after spending 1400 words in studious reduction of Republican politics into a nasty scrap for money fueled by rabid religious factions, he's still got the hubris to spew this:
The difference is Democrats are running a nasty race that has as its subtext race and gender. The Republican race, on the other hand, is a serious debate about serious ideas.
And suddenly, glaring self-contradiction aside, this isn't funny anymore. Serious ideas? Two nights ago Romney and McCain sat in a glitzed-up airplane mausoleum intoning the name Reagan as many times as possible and spatting about whom had said the words "timetable for withdrawal" and when, as Nancy Reagan and Conan the Barbarian made goo-goo eyes at one another in the audience. There's nothing serious about this circus.
Meanwhile, as Chris Matthews and other pundits beat the twin dead horses of race and gender, Obama and other Democrats talk about anything but: health care, the economy, national security, Iraq. Americans are begging their leaders for leadership on these issues. The world is begging America to be America again. Democrats are talking about these things, over here at On Day One and elsewhere, preparing for the moment when we can finally get back to business. What are the first issues of a new Administration going to be? Aside from telling Turd Blossom where to stick it?