William Ayers is dead. Not the man mind you, just the smear. The plan to link Obama to William Ayers didn't work. In fact Obama smashed that smear to the ground in front of millions of viewers Wednesday night. He then went one step further and explained the full extent of his relationship with William Ayers, as well as who he would have advising him in the White House. Brilliant move I might add, though he may need to make a little room somewhere on that list for Colin Powell, you know to show he can work with Republicans.
At this point, to continue with the William Ayers smear would be the equivalent of beating a dead horse and would hurt McCain's chances even more than it already has. It's bad enough to bring it up to begin with, to continue bringing it up after Obama so casually destroyed it is unthinkable. Even for a campaign as lost and McCain's. So on that note it is time to move on to recycling another failed smear from the Democratic Primary.
Because we all know these things worked wonders for Hillary Clinton.
So the William Ayers ride is finally over. There are only two options left, you either go with Tony Rezko who Obama has been more than forth coming about. Even sitting down with the Chicago Tribune to answer every single question regarding the Tony Rezko scandal they could think of and not leaving until everyone felt their questions had been answered.
Or you go with Rev. Wright who caused the single biggest detour in the Primary Campaign. Made a huge impression. Hogged the headlines for almost a month. Was repeated over and over and over again so much it made the infamous "Dean Scream" episode look like child's play. Thankfully Obama has a very eloquent and positive speech on race which he delivered in the aftermath of Rev. Wright that he can go back and sample from in the event that McCain decides to rekindle that fire.
In his famous speech on race, delivered in Philadelphia in March, Obama condemned Wright’s use of "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
Of course the real problem with bringing up Reverend Wright is three fold.
First: There hasn't been any NEWS regarding Reverend Wright.
This means McCain is going to have to somehow press the issue. And that looks desperate making it an obvious political ploy and bound to backfire. We saw this with Palin and Ayers recently, and I would expect McCain to use the same tactic with Rev. Wright. Send Sarah Palin out on the stump and compare the crazy "my god is bigger than your god" pastor at their rally recently to Rev. Wright. The idea being the media will turn any type of Rev. Wright related news into a resurgence of the kind of Wright Watch coverage we saw in the primaries.
It won't happen not only because jumping from "Obama is a terrorist" too "Obama has a crazy Christian pastor" stinks of desperate (not to mention logical fallacy) but because...
Two: The media is bored of Reverend Wright.
It played itself out last time around. Obama denounced Rev. Wright and even left the church to show just how opposed he was to Rev. Wright's statements and the story continued unabated on the 24 hour news networks for another week non-stop until the very pundits who had originally pushed the story grew tired of it and moved on.
Because of the fact that there is no new NEWS regarding Rev. Wright the very mention of his name will be seen as old news. Unless McCain somehow gets Rev. Wright to come out of hiding and say something insane there is no way in hell bringing up Rev. Wright will be reported on as anything more than recycling old attacks that didn't work the first time around. It is called the NEWS for a reason. If the story isn't new, it's not worth the air time. As Gertrude Stein once said "There's no there, there!"
I would bet the only person on television who would even welcome the return of Rev. Wright to the national scene is Stephen Colbert and that's only because he loves running those old clips.
Three: The American People are bored with Reverend Wright.
Obama put the issue to rest in the primaries. The media ran it into the ground for so long that the people stopped caring weeks before the media realized they had stopped caring. The issue has been dead for months, so unless Rev. Wright comes out of hiding and starts railing against America nobody is going to want to hear about Rev. Wright. If the media brings it up, the American people will by and large change the channel. It's been discussed. In fact it's been over discussed. Over analyzed. Over played. And over hyped.
But aside from that, over and over again we see in the polls that the American people do not care about this stuff. They care about the issues that are going to effect them directly. Once again; it's the economy, stupid!
They want the economy to get better. They want to be able to pay their mortgage. They want to be able to get a job, or a better paying job. They want to put the Bush years behind them and start working toward a better future. Everything else is a meaningless, and pointless distraction. The holidays are coming, parents aren't going to be able to afford to buy presents children and McCain wants to talk about Rev. Wright?
Be my guest. You keep setting 'em up and we'll keep knocking 'em down.
Now having said all of that you may be wondering why McCain would even consider digging up such an old, tired tactic and recycling it when William Ayers so clearly backfired. Furthermore by now you must be wondering why I even believe the McCain campaign would be stupid enough to try this when it so obviously wouldn't work. Well I'll let Sarah Palin explain it to you...
Among those who think Wright is fair game is McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who told conservative commentator William Kristol for a New York Times column last month: "To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."
http://news.yahoo.com/...
But the part that really makes me believe that McCain will in fact bring that up is the following quote from the same article...
Asked about the issue during the firestorm over it last March, McCain told Sean Hannity on Fox News’ "Hannity & Colmes": "I think that when people support you, it doesn’t mean that you support everything you say. Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with. And I don’t believe that Senator Obama would support any of those ... I do know Senator Obama. He does not share those views."
Why would such a comment by McCain make me believe he will in fact go after Obama on Rev. Wright? Because this is the type of quote we always seem to stumble on after McCain attacks on something like this. Mark my words this quote will be the proof of hypocrisy, the next (and hopefully last) example of McCain vs. McCain. The man who contradicts himself on a weekly basis. Yes, it has gotten to the point where if you find an admirable quote of Senator McCain you can bet good money he will reverse course on that position before too long.
In March he knew Obama didn't share Wrights views. Within days he will claim Obama and Wright are soul mates.