dj-chefron
02-28-2008, 09:03 AM
These are a couple of post that lays out John McClain plan to win in the fall.
02.27.08 -- 11:04PM By Josh Marshall
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. They're like the libretto in a Wagner opera, nice for some narrative structure. But it's the score that's the real essence of it, the point of the whole exercise.
Now, a good deal has been made out of John McCain's repudiation of talk radio yakmeister Bill Cunningham, who led off for McCain at one of his rallies with the full run of Obama sludge. But don't be distracted or fooled. This is more like an example of what the digital commerce folks refer to as 'channel conflict'. You've got your multiple distribution channels. You've got the way McCain's selling the product. Broadcast. Broad and thematic about McCain. But you've got a number of other product channels to sell through, most of them a lot grittier, but no less essential for ultimate success.
Both can work simultaneously. In fact, in the kind of campaign McCain's running, they're both essential for success (see the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina). The key is just that the channels don't cross. Because that's when the trouble starts and they can begin to undermine or even short-circuit each other. And that's what threatened to happened here.
Don't insult your intelligence or mine by pretending that John McCain's plan for this race doesn't rely on hundreds of Cunninghams -- large and small -- across the country, and the RNC and all the GOP third party groups, to be peddling this stuff nonstop for the next eight months because it's the only way John McCain have a real shot at contesting this race.
If McCain really wants to repudiate this stuff, he can start with the Tennessee Republican party which dished all the slurs and smears about Obama being a Nation of Islam-loving anti-Semite, just today. And once he's done talking to the people who will be running his Tennessee campaign, we'll have a number of others he can talk to, like the head of his Ohio campaign, former Sen. Mike DeWine, who gave that Cunningham guy his marching orders.
Let's just not fool ourselves, not lie to ourselves about what's happening here and who's in chargeThis is from the editor of Time Magazine.
by Mark Halperin
Nomination fights are tribal matters. There are certain lines candidates from the same party cannot cross when trying to win. In general election battles, there are fewer rules and constraints.
If Clinton is not able to come back and beat Obama, there will be a fair amount of (to borrow one of her phrases) coulda-shoulda-woulda on behalf of her campaign: things she could have done that she chose not to do -– or was not able to do.
The McCain campaign is staffed with savvy, experienced operatives who have closely watched the rise of Obama, and they have learned from Clinton’s failure to take down her Democratic rival.
Things McCain can do when running against Obama that Clinton has been unable to do well or at all:
1. Play the national security card without hesitation.
2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction.
3. Go at Obama unambiguously from the right.
4. Encourage interest groups, bloggers, and right-leaning media to explore Obama’s past.
5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.
6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama.
7. Exploit Michelle Obama’s mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure.
8. Play dirty without alienating his party.
9. Dismiss Obama’s brief national tenure from his own lofty platform of decades in the Senate – there will be no ambiguity about who has more experience as conventionally defined.
10. Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.
11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.
12. Employ third party groups like the NRA to hit Obama on issues that might turn off general election voters. Perhaps an ad such as this will run in Ohio: “So, what do you really know about Barack Obama? Did you know he supports meeting with the head of terrorist states? Do you know he wants to get rid of your right to own a handgun? Do you know he is calling for the repeal of the law preventing gay marriage? Do you know he is for a trillion-dollar tax increase? What do you really know about Barack Obama?”
13. Face an electorate less consumed with “change change change” (the main priority for Democratic voters) and keenly interested in “ready from day one” as an equally important ideal.
14. Link biography (experience/courage) and leadership (straight talk) to a vision animated by detail – accentuating Obama’s relative lack of specificity.
15. Give Obama his first real race against a credible Republican. (Clinton has always asserted that Obama would wilt before a fierce Republican assault.)
16. Confront Obama with a united, focused campaign absent of second-guessing, which hits the same themes and message every day.
02.27.08 -- 11:04PM By Josh Marshall
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. They're like the libretto in a Wagner opera, nice for some narrative structure. But it's the score that's the real essence of it, the point of the whole exercise.
Now, a good deal has been made out of John McCain's repudiation of talk radio yakmeister Bill Cunningham, who led off for McCain at one of his rallies with the full run of Obama sludge. But don't be distracted or fooled. This is more like an example of what the digital commerce folks refer to as 'channel conflict'. You've got your multiple distribution channels. You've got the way McCain's selling the product. Broadcast. Broad and thematic about McCain. But you've got a number of other product channels to sell through, most of them a lot grittier, but no less essential for ultimate success.
Both can work simultaneously. In fact, in the kind of campaign McCain's running, they're both essential for success (see the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina). The key is just that the channels don't cross. Because that's when the trouble starts and they can begin to undermine or even short-circuit each other. And that's what threatened to happened here.
Don't insult your intelligence or mine by pretending that John McCain's plan for this race doesn't rely on hundreds of Cunninghams -- large and small -- across the country, and the RNC and all the GOP third party groups, to be peddling this stuff nonstop for the next eight months because it's the only way John McCain have a real shot at contesting this race.
If McCain really wants to repudiate this stuff, he can start with the Tennessee Republican party which dished all the slurs and smears about Obama being a Nation of Islam-loving anti-Semite, just today. And once he's done talking to the people who will be running his Tennessee campaign, we'll have a number of others he can talk to, like the head of his Ohio campaign, former Sen. Mike DeWine, who gave that Cunningham guy his marching orders.
Let's just not fool ourselves, not lie to ourselves about what's happening here and who's in chargeThis is from the editor of Time Magazine.
by Mark Halperin
Nomination fights are tribal matters. There are certain lines candidates from the same party cannot cross when trying to win. In general election battles, there are fewer rules and constraints.
If Clinton is not able to come back and beat Obama, there will be a fair amount of (to borrow one of her phrases) coulda-shoulda-woulda on behalf of her campaign: things she could have done that she chose not to do -– or was not able to do.
The McCain campaign is staffed with savvy, experienced operatives who have closely watched the rise of Obama, and they have learned from Clinton’s failure to take down her Democratic rival.
Things McCain can do when running against Obama that Clinton has been unable to do well or at all:
1. Play the national security card without hesitation.
2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction.
3. Go at Obama unambiguously from the right.
4. Encourage interest groups, bloggers, and right-leaning media to explore Obama’s past.
5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.
6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama.
7. Exploit Michelle Obama’s mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure.
8. Play dirty without alienating his party.
9. Dismiss Obama’s brief national tenure from his own lofty platform of decades in the Senate – there will be no ambiguity about who has more experience as conventionally defined.
10. Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.
11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.
12. Employ third party groups like the NRA to hit Obama on issues that might turn off general election voters. Perhaps an ad such as this will run in Ohio: “So, what do you really know about Barack Obama? Did you know he supports meeting with the head of terrorist states? Do you know he wants to get rid of your right to own a handgun? Do you know he is calling for the repeal of the law preventing gay marriage? Do you know he is for a trillion-dollar tax increase? What do you really know about Barack Obama?”
13. Face an electorate less consumed with “change change change” (the main priority for Democratic voters) and keenly interested in “ready from day one” as an equally important ideal.
14. Link biography (experience/courage) and leadership (straight talk) to a vision animated by detail – accentuating Obama’s relative lack of specificity.
15. Give Obama his first real race against a credible Republican. (Clinton has always asserted that Obama would wilt before a fierce Republican assault.)
16. Confront Obama with a united, focused campaign absent of second-guessing, which hits the same themes and message every day.