Everything Plus The Kitchen Sink

Picking up where we left off yesterday, we established the two directions this presidential campaign has taken.  First, John Sith McCain succeeded in casting it as a referendum on Barack Hoover Obama's fitlessness to be president of the United States; then, three weeks ago, McCain failed to truthfully define the Wall Street Meltdown, the Democrats falsely blamed it on Bush, the GOP, and conservative free market economic policies without rebuttal, that smear became the conventional wisdom, and the Arizona senator further crippled himself by foolishly squandering the central justification of his candidacy - his ability to "reach across the aisle to get things done."  Now the election is a referendum on the Bush presidency, of which McCain is seen as a four year extention, and Barry O is just the generic "other guy".

We in the right-wing grassroots have been BEGGING McCain to start fighting back.  Today he and his surrogates began to do so, but in ways not entirely beneficial to his dwindling chances of a comeback victory, methinks.

Over the weekend, Sarah Palin began reviving the Obama-William Ayers connection, telling an Eagleton, Colorado rally that, "Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country....This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."...

At first blush, one wonders where this line of attack has been from Team Sith.  It certainly is a valid knock on B.O.'s vaunted "judgment," at the very least, and raises questions about how soft he would be on Islamist terrorists and their state sponsors even beyond his proclaimed intention to prostrate and humiliate himself and his country before them next year.  Then one remembers: Maverick wanted to run an "honorable" campaign, a "civil" campaign about "the issues."  He didn't want to "descend" into "character attacks" and the like.  So he waits until now, when he's shrinking in Barry O's rear view mirror, to suddenly discover the efficacy of brass knuckle politicking.  Which makes said resort look like precisely the "desperation" Team Messiah chortlingly says it is.

For Obamanation, this should be easy: just sit on your growing lead.  Dismiss the Ayers allusions as the death throes of a dying campaign and remain "focused like a laser beam" on "George Bush's financial collapse."  Whatever you do, don't reflexively fire back in kind and let Darth Queeg change the subject from the economy back to The Chosen One's knee-jerk thin-skinnedness that got him in so much trouble back in the summer.  Particularly when the Enemy Media will so eagerly do it for you.

Evidently they're incapable of exercising such restraint.  Either that or they're crapping their pants in fear at this "radical association" rising to some sort of electoral crystalization point.

Obama Campaign manager David Axelrod tried playing dumb:

Another Obamunist, Robert Gibbs, echoed the "Barry is autistic" alibi, although he did manage to get in the trademark Obama "this is a distraction" defense:

They say ignorance is bliss, but it's not a trait generally favored in those who aspire to the highest office in the land.  I'm not sure that claiming that False Messiah "didn't know" that his "pal," and certainly close political associate and mentor, Bill Ayers was a left-wing Timothy McVeigh isn't as damaging as a public embrace of the man would be.  Especially seeing as it is flatly impossible:

To embrace Ayers and his wife would acknowledge Obama as a radical anti-American extremist unfit for the presidency.  To claim that Obama could have somehow not known what these people were and are is to condemn Obama as gullible to the point of mental impairment, and thus unfit for the presidency, and in practical terms reveal him as a liar with overflowing contempt for the American people he's expecting to entrust him with the presidency.

Of course, we know that the American people are not averse to electing (and re-electing) congenital liars.  But wouldn't it have been better all the way around for Barry to have simply thrown Ayers under the bus the way he did his "former" pastor?  Not just made a show of condemning the Ayers' Weather Underground past but also repudiating his associations with them on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the launching of his political career a decade ago as well?  Heck, it's not as though The One couldn't name Ayers his Secretary of Education after the election was in the can.

Speaking of Uncle Jeremiah, the lipsticked pitbull also invoked that name we haven't heard in many moons:

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “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 twenty 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.”

I guess so. And I guess we’ll soon know McCain’s call on whether he wants to bring Wright up — perhaps at his debate with Obama Tuesday night.

Hey, if mentioning St. Barack's long-time affiliation to a white domestic terrorist is "racist," and criticizing congressional Democrats, particularly two blindingly white ones, for their culpability in the Wall Street Meltdown is racist, and pretty much anything other than bowing down and worshiping Barack Hussein Obama is "racist," then what the hell, maybe the Original Mavericks should take J-Ger's advice:

Picture the ad:

Announcer: You know your pastor.
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"
Announcer: You know your church.
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"
Announcer: Barack Obama said he didn't really know him - or those who applauded him.
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"
Announcer: What are the odds that Barack Obama stays away from Jeremiah Wright for the next four years?
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"
Announcer: Who would give the invocation at Obama's inauguration?
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"
Announcer: If he wins, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves the next time we hear...
Wright: "No no no! God damn America!"

Playing dumb was a defensive action.  Team Hussein should have just bypassed the whole thing and kept pulling away to the election finish line.  But I guess that's just not "the Chicago way."

Thing is, I never understood the "Chicago way" to include trying to carry out a St. Valentine's Day Massacre with machine guns full of blanks:

Because the McCain camp is bringing up Obama’s working relationship with William Ayers – the guy who put a bomb in the women’s room of the Pentagon – the Obama camp is bringing up McCain’s relationship in the Keating Five scandal back in the late 80s/early 90s. [emphasis added]

No, I'm not making that up, and neither is Geraghty:

Put aside the fact that McCain sees that his association with Keating was a mistake [and was fully exonerated in the K5 probe], whereas Obama refuses to even be straight with voters about how long he knew and worked with Ayers.  Can you find a single American who otherwise would support McCain but has decided against it because of his meetings with a Savings and Loan owner back in the late 1980s?

That broad swath of the American public included...Barack Hoover Obama, ostensibly, as recently as five months ago:

After the event, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki suggested in a statement that the Keating Five would not reemerge as an issue — at least not from the campaign.

"There is more than enough space between Barack Obama and John McCain on the issues, whether it is tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans or a time line for bringing our troops home, and that is where we will focus our campaign," Psaki said.

This move is beyond idiotic on its very face.  It plumbs the depths of morony.  McCain is a known quantity.  The Keating Five stuff is built into his "brand identity," and frankly is buried far beneath the past decade of his "maverickiness".  Team O trying to play that up, just as hypocritically as McCain going after B.O. on Ayers and Wright (for which he fired a campaign staffer last spring, don't forget), makes Obama look flailingly desperate to try and manufacture "distractions" of his own from an attack they obviously consider to be a helluva lot more than just a "distraction".  Which is all it would be if they would actually ignore it as such.

It's not the reaction or strategy of a winning campaign.  Neither is using ANOTHER Keating Five senator as your designated surrogate to attack McCain on the Keating Five scandal.

So, we've been reminded that Barack Hoover Obama is, and always shall be, easily provoked.  But will that really turn this campaign around?  Naturally, Hugh Hewitt thinks so, though even he doesn't think it can by itself.  In order for John Sith McCain to have a prayer of emerging victorious, against all odds, four weeks from now, he simply HAS to set the record straight on who's truly to blame for the subprime lending debacle.

Sometimes the LORD says no; sometimes He says yes; and sometimes He says "wait".  Today, our maddeningly frustrated impatience has been rewarded:

Listen to the visceral reactions of the crowd.  You think the GOP base isn't like a barely restrained coiled spring after three weeks of seeing the Democrats get away with public relations murder?  I half suspect that if Sailor hadn't finally cut loose with this belated straight talk, the assembled Pachyderms might have given his Secret Service detail a thing or two to worry about.

We need more of this:

....and more:

....and more:

And then, the coup de grace:

McCain needs to stress that tax hikes of any kind would be a total disaster during this economic emergency, and that letting folks keep more of what they earn is a recovery prescription. He needs to emphasize the need for across-the-board tax cuts for individuals and businesses. Lower marginal tax rates will reward work, investment, and risk-taking. They also will put money in people’s pockets as they keep more of what they earn.

McCain can point to Paul Ryan’s modified flat tax with two brackets of 15% and 25%. That would be a great message. This is an economic emergency and it calls for strong medicine. This is not the time to take away tax cuts. It’s a time to add them. And reducing marginal tax rates would add substantially to taxpayer benefits on a permanent basis with new incentive rewards.

McCain should next talk about a corporate tax cut from 35% to 25% as a means of boosting jobs and wages. He should note that study after study shows that roughly two-thirds of the benefit of a corporate tax cut goes to the workforce. A corporate tax cut also is pro-investment and will make this country more competitive. But the key point is that a lower corporate tax rate is a job-creator. McCain must explain that you can’t have jobs without healthy businesses that are funded by investment....

Tax cuts, free trade, and money growth — those are the pillars of recovery. An across-the-board tax cut for individuals and businesses will boost jobs at home and our competitiveness worldwide. Free trade benefits both consumers and businesses. The Fed’s money supply must keep expanding.

That message gives McCain a fighting chance

Even if Maverick has never been a tax-cutter, opposed the Bush tax cuts (I can see the Obama ad featuring McCain's 2003 floor speeches and press interviews now, if they've got three brain cells left to rub together), and is far more of a Bob Dole Republican than "a footsoldier in the Reagan revolution."  Frankly, The Earmark Avenger is a terrible vehicle for a pro-growth message, just as he's combusting what remains of his "honorable war hero" image onto the same ashheap that he foolishly sacrificed his "bipartisan maverick who can get things done" gimmick at the "White House summit" two weeks ago by reversing himself on going after Barry O on his personal Axis of Evil (Wright, Ayers, Rezko), as though there was ever a possibility of running against a Chicago Donk machine politician without back alleys, brass knucks, and anything resembling rules being involved.

I find myself asking the same question about McCain that I asked about Bob Dole twelve years ago when he, too, finally woke up and started fighting for the office for which he'd allegedly been running for the previous two years: Where the hell has this pugnaciousness BEEN?  If he'd played up Ayers and Wright and Rezko back in June, say, when that Obama radical mentor triumvarite was fresher in the public's collective consciousness, as a prelude to the "celebrity" campaign, perhaps McCain's within-the-margin-of-error lead a month ago would have been mid-or even high-single-digits, and his recent cratering would have been back into a dead heat rather than the relatively daunting deficit he now faces.  Now he has to do everything at once: rebut the Dems' anti-capitalist smears, remind voters what a poor judge of character the Chicago Cherubim is, and make them forget that without Democrat indulgence, John McCain is more impotent than Bob Dole before he started plugging Viagra.

Maybe he can pull it off.  Five points nationally (on average) is a lot smaller hill to climb than the eighteen point hole Dole faced in '96, and managed to cut in half.  And it doesn't take much stimulus to turn the glass-jawed Weasel of the Tribe of Jeremiah into the Sith Lord's greatest campaign asset.

Or maybe whatizface on MSNBC was right last week and this race is already in garbage time.  All I know is, until my composite of state polling composites (see the widget on the left sidebar) halts the Obama-ward drift of the past three weeks and starts swinging back from whence it came - and, for that matter, until the Dow stops dropping five hundred points a day at the growingly certain spectre of a "messianic" presidency and all the Herbert Hoover-ian economic policies (higher taxes, bigger government, busted budgets, neoprotectionism) it will be heir to - I'm going to continue to prepare for the worst.