How familiar does this sound?
Not a great article, but I was struck by how similarly the McCain camp is befuddled by Obama in the exact same way the Clinton camp was.
Sound familiar?
There is a debate in Republican politics—and inside the McCain campaign—about what's plaguing the GOP contender. A central question is just how much time McCain should spend attacking his opponent. Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru in the National Review argue that he needs to get more aggressive in raising doubts about Obama, whose advantages put him in a position, they fear, to run away with the race. Other longtime McCain allies argue for an almost opposite approach.
Sound familiar?
posted by mikevotes at
9:15 AM
4 Comments:
The problem that McCain has with attacking Obama is that Obama keeps proving the attacks as bogus. And on the process McCain overstates, exagerates, and flubs the facts. He, like Clinton, is left with hypotheticals and character assassination. Oh, and hoping Obama screws up something big.
Will that be enough.
By
-epm, at 11:42 AM
Right. We're following something of the same pattern.
I think they don't get this new sort of campaign. Obama's appeal is primarily emotional, populist, fairly separate from anything he says.
They're trying to combat him through what have been traditional political methods, lists of policy points, traditional attacks.
What they don't seem to get is that he resonates in an emotional way.
They have to find a way to dislocate him from the emotional projections, and attacking him directly doesn't do it.
It's like telling someone that their new boyfriend is bad. Even if they know it, they're going to ignore you.
I don't know what the key is, but what McCain's doing isn't it.
In theory, their best hope would be that Obama somehow does something to "show us who he really is," but that really doesn't look like it's going to happen.
I'm becoming convinced that this week might well be a significant one in the overall campaign.
By
mikevotes, at 1:30 PM
The problems McCain (and Clinton) had was that Obama just wouldn't take the bait; wouldn't get sucked into tit-for-tat name-calling or cat fighting. He's a cool cucumber. And people notice that.
Secondly the comment that Obama somehow does something to "show us who he really is" is an interesting one. I guess this is what people are really thinking when they talk about Obama making a campaign ending gaff... They think his just a big ol' phony. They're buying their own anti-Obama propaganda.
The problem with this is, it's quite possible he isn't a phony. That he is who he is and not some asshole trying to pull a fast one over the public. Maybe there's a bit of psychological projection going on here on the part of the Right Wing...
(I realize he's a politician and all that comes with having to promote yourself as a candidate etc, etc. I'm not getting all misty eyed.)
By
-epm, at 2:55 PM
Yes. They really think that he will make some mistake that will destroy him. Clinton waited for six months....
He is. He sticks to his gameplan. If anything, they've gotten tighter on the controls since he won the primary.
PS. Even if he is phony, he might also be really, really, really good.
Waiting for a mistake is not a strategy.
By
mikevotes, at 3:23 PM
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