"We're dancing as fast as we can".. Republican dirty tricks machine is overloaded and about to blow!

There comes a time when silly slimy tactics just simply can't make up for a real campaign strategy and it seems pretty clear that John McCain has already hit that wall. The dirty tricks just aren't working anymore no matter how fast the tricksters are dancing behind John McCain and Sarah Palin..

We've got Sarah Palin and a bunch of Republican phone robots running around telling people that Obama associates with terrorists - The only problem with their fish story: Obama was 8 years old when Ayers was in the Weather Underground. Thirty plus years later, Mr. Ayers was Professor Ayers who "associated" with as many Republicans as Democrats and the "association" was sitting on an education board.

The real reason they have to use robodial to spread these lies? Nobody in their right minds with any conscience or common sense could sit there as a volunteer or even as a paid staffer and make those calls to voters.

Seems like this one SO didn't stick and in fact it is backfiring on them to the point that fellow Republican Senators are telling McCain to knock it off in their home states.

Then we've got the usual chorus of radio and TV talking heads: Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox and friends talking down Obama every day while trying to make Sarah Palin sound like the second coming.

We've got Joe the Plant running around saying "I don't want attention" while showing up at rallies in Florida and elsewhere. He just doesn't want attention when he gets unmasked and debunked - not a licensed plumber, not independent, not undecided, can't afford to buy Newell Plumbing, Newell Plumbing doesn't make $250k a year, driver's license suspended, donated $100 to McCain BEFORE confronting Obama.

Then we had Michelle Bachman going on TV calling Democrats un-American to rile up the Republican base to go vote for her and John McCain.

Only problem: She made the YouTube circuit almost the moment she said it and riled up a hornet's nest of Democratic donors from across the entire country who dropped a million dollar cash bomb on her re-election campaign in a matter of about 48 hours. It has since been doubled by the DSCC and the Republican Party has decided to cut and run on her now that she's become as politically radioactive as Chernobyl.

It's awfully hard to come back from such an expensive mistake Michelle unless you've got a huge personal fortune to self fund your way out of a two-million dollar plus hole.

And now today...We've got this year's "Willie Horton" moment - The Pittsburgh, PA McCain staffer who claims she was attacked by...wait for it.... a black man... you just KNEW that was coming when you heard the story... and mutilated for having a McCain sticker on her car. The "injuries" are clearly faked as is the whole story and McCain and Palin's exploitation of it is backfiring already.

The problem with these Atwateresque / Rovian dirty tricks is that we now live in an age of the internet as well as 24 hour news and internet users have become savvy at posting videos of outrageous statements and doing the hard research that TV reporter talking heads either can't or won't do for themselves.

In short, in the internet age "what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas..it goes around the world in milliseconds". Dirty tricks Republicans haven't learned this lesson quite yet but they will by the end of this election.

In short the tricks fail because these dirty tricks and the tricksters behind them are being unmasked and debunked in near real time - the stories don't have any time to stick and build up credibility. Instead what happens is that they actually serve to impeach the credibility of the campaign that practices them.

It is this observer's belief that we have seen the death of Rovian dirty tricks - at least in their current form - because they are blowing up in the tricksters faces like Wyle E. Coyote's latest contraption to catch the Road Runner.

Ultimately there comes a time when dirty tricks just look like desperation and a lack of leadership and the REAL undecided voters start breaking against you. I've seen it with a series of nasty negative mailers against a Dem state rep here in Florida - the Republicans outspent the Dem 4 to 1 and bombarded voters with ridiculous, nasty, and simply false mailers about the Dem.

Guess what?

It backfired on them.

The Republicans didn't realize that the voters had met the Democrat or a surrogate at their door and that the credibility of that face to face meeting with an activist or the candidate far outweighed hyperbolic negative mailers. When forced to choose between the two, they believed that the Dem candidate was reasonable, sincere, intelligent and compassionate and that the designers of the Republican mail piece were actually the crazies.

The same sort of thing is happening right now to the Republicans in the Presidential race. The voters have met Obama, seen him in a debate, talked to a supporter and have made up their minds that the McCain campaign is populated by nut jobs.

Yes they're dancing as fast as they can alright...but it just isn't working.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

Great Post Doug!

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth