I'm sure you have all seen the "I'm a little confused..." viral email going around about Obama vs. the other candidates. I thought it was pretty funny, pretty clever so I googled it to see if I could give it a little social networking love. I was shocked to read an authentic rebuttal which I won't dignify with a link. The problem is that the guy who wrote the rebuttal, bullet point by bullet point, clearly believed in what he was saying. If anyone could read that email and rebut it with sincerity, I started to think we might be in trouble in November. But I noticed that there was one bullet point he couldn't rebut:
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
The response of that particular writer was:
That was a sin and he should be questioned about it.
It now seems clear that what I take to be plain and simple common sense does not resonate with a good portion of America. But, what does resonate is moral hypocrisy and a lack of solid family values.
If substance can't win for us (and that's a very depressing thought) then this is where we need to be focusing our messaging. It is out of the Rove playbook, but we need to hit him where he is presumably strong. Let's start questioning McCain's moral and family values. They don't look so good to the average marriage-loving conservatives out there.
We don't have to be smart to stop McCain, we just need to talk about what the other side cares about.