It’s about character, stupid

1 comment October 6th, 2008

Democrats think the election will be about the economy. To an extent, it will. It always is. But The McCain campaigners, no longer mavericks but 90-day wonder graduates of the Karl Rove OCS at Fort Atwater, have mightily changed the subject, going back to the Hillary Clinton playbook from the primaries.

From now on, it’s to be all-Ayers, all-Wright, all-the-time. The candidate doesn’t have to do it himself — besides Sarah Palin, McCain can rely on a bevy of rightist talkers, including but not limited to: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Michael Reagan, William Kristol, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage. These and other talkers blanket the airwaves, reaching 10s of millions of people a day, all day and late into the night.

As they have in the past, Democrats don’t take these commentators — the alternative media — into account. They do so at their peril. These folks have vast influence, as Rush likes to say, across the fruited plain.

The left has no one of the caliber of Limbaugh, the only witty, insightful and slightly ironic talker in a stable of GOP talking-point reciters. Limbaugh has made it plain that he hasn’t much use for McCain, who apparently has not much use for Limbaugh, who slimed him in 2000 when the ex-fighter pilot from Arizona was running against George W. Bush, the fighting ace of the ghost squadron of the Texas Air National Guard.

The only leftwing talker who is midly interesting and entertaining is Ed Schultz.

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Have I made my point? Tha