Today we have the complete trinity of the beat Obama campaign of the GOP. Last night's speech ushers in the final piece of the playbook. It's an upgrade from the usual fear and smear two step of Rove et al. This effectively neutralizes any and all criticism and due diligence of the media, surrogates, and God forbid yes the Daily Kos of the McCain campaign. This is more desparation from a desparate campaign. There is no message as usual so the goal is to muddy the water, shift the focus, create division. They say they are not the same but this comes right out of the Bush campaign playbook with the doughboy himself (Karl Rove) pulling the strings.
So lets review this unholy trinity, by first looking at the media card. Barack had just come back from his overseas trip, with all the major news anchors in tow. This led to his first significant bump in the polls and also began to answer the "Is he presidential" question. The counter by McSame led by the "angry and outraged" Rick Davis, was to complain that the media was unfair and biased to the Obama campaign.
Result was a sharp pivot or I should say a cow tow to an all McCain all the time meme; what did they do to take advantage of this attention? Talk about issues? That would mean you'd have to issues to talk about. No what they did was punk the media into giving them a ton of free media coverage by releasing negative ad after negative ad supposedly to play in the battleground states, very few did. Why, when you can have millions watch them for free on cable and network news shows. Did it work? absolutely. Obama's overseas bounce virtually evaporated.
Secondly, the vaunted POW card. I know its as if the skies should open, and song come from the heavens every time its mentioned. Have you noticed how extremely dour and sullen McSame gets every time he references his Vietnamese vacation. I'm sure you remember why this became the favorite rejoinder. The simple answer would have been seven, no nine, no eleven houses.
However, since McSame could not remember how many houses he owned. The Obama camp hit him hard on being out of touch with most americans and the economy. This called for drastic measures surrogates from all over had just one talking point "POW". McSame himself had to go on that most "liberal" of all media shows Jay Leno so he could deliver the line; followed up by a Meet The Press stint. Once again nothing remotely resembling an issue is used as a comeback; in this case it's because the "economy is fundamentally strong" i'm sure.
Finally, this brings me to the "pit bull with lipstick". McSame wrapped up his nomination in March, a full three months before Obama. I know we forget that don't we? His experience and judgement takes him down to two days before he has to make a choice and viola!; surprise surprise its the hookey mom from Alaska. The media, scrambled to find anything they could to report about her, they even how dare they asked her questions. In today's information age it took less than three days to find plenty. This of course led to more media questions of both candidate McSame and his soulmate.
Rather than own up to the fact that it was a desparation pick, or at least admit it was a last minute pick. This would have and legitimately I might add called into question his judgement yet again. The campaign sequestered her away for three days, while surrogates and the like start banging the drum of sexism and media bias. What happens next you ask? The convention is comes to day three, and is given a steady diet of the reddest of red moose meat. While our little lady of Wasilla marches on stage cloaked in victimization and sympathy, delivers the most attacking and divisive speech of the entire campaign.
The facts are clear; they still won't talk about issues. They won't talk about judgement. They can't talk about experience now. The question remains who will call them on it. The media? Surrogates of the campaign? The Obama campaign? Dems lets keep moving forward, keep hitting them with the issues, keep dare I say it organize your communities, but mostly; keep asking McSame and hockey mom the tough questions with no regret. We will take back the White House as long as we don't let the "divider" off the hook.