McCain’s Supporters’ Low Road

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo observes the Road Map for McCain’s campaign against Obama.

Hopefully, everyone can now see the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama. Yes, we have some general points on taxes, culture wars and McCain as war hero who can protect us in ways that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy Barack Obama can’t.

But that’s not the core. The core is to drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American, BLACK, terrorist, Arab. Maybe a little hustler and shifty thrown in, but we’ll have to see. The details and specific arguments are sort of beside the point.

Josh observes that the Candidate maintains plausible deniability while surrogates do the dirty work. It seems to me that Senator Clinton’s campaign has suffered by using these old-fashioned tactics. I can only hope that most citizens are growing tired of this kind of distraction and will reward the candidate, and perhaps even the Party, with the more civilized campaign.

But, not to mince words, it is my observation that the GOP harbors more dirty street fighters than the Democrats. And it makes sense, since for many in the GOP, the ends justify the means, while the Democrats tend to identify more with the means and have a bit more remorse about taking steps back in social progress.