Rove & Co. have a campaign going to discredit Elizabeth Warren and OWS with one nasty video. Greg Sargent thinks (hopes?) they’re making a mistake. I think and hope he’s right. Their recent forays into Ohio just made people mad and got them nowhere. Let’s hope their smug,vicious attack is just another part of unproductive Republican extremism that more and more Americans are wise to. That 9% “favorable” rating should make the party of “no” feel a little worried by now…
In the meantime, Sargent writes, Elizabeth Warren is handling it well.
… Warren is refusing to engage the argument the way the right has framed it — as an all or nothing choice between embracing everything about the protests, or repudiating them. Warren and her campaign probably recognize the political danger of getting drawn into debating that false choice.
Instead, she’s keeping the focus on the larger critique of inequality and excessive Wall Street influence embodied by the protests, and directing the conversation towards the broader public’s rising anxiety about these pernicious problems.
The big investment on this new ad from Crossroads GPS suggests that this line of attack is only getting started. Warren will be the number one national target when it comes to conservative efforts to use the protests to discredit Democrats and their (very modest) efforts to combat inequality. But she seems to be betting that the blue collar whites and independents she needs will see past such efforts and won’t be distracted by them from the larger message embodied by resurgent populism and her candidacy. In other words: Not backing down.
She’s smart and she’s got a lot of people on her side. And she has stood up to rightwing nonsense as no other public figure has done.
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Explore the Occupy Washington “village.”
Cross posted from Pairie Weather.
Dennis Cox’s Karl Rove cartoon via Shutterstock.