Going negative starts to work for McCain

It's the classic problem for Democrats since the 1980s, at least. The GOP and the conservatives go negative. It's what they do; it produces results for them and to a certain extent, they're proud of it. The reason that going negative doesn't work for Democrats is: conservatives thrive on hate and anger--you give them someone to hate or fear, they turn out. Liberals and progressives don't respond to that kind of attack as a substitute for a discussion of policy or leaders; you speak to them in the language of hate and anger and you're just as likely to alienate them as to co-opt their support.

And that's the classic problem in modern U.S. politics: go negative as a conservative, you dispense with the issues and destroy the candidate's reputation. Tonight the AP reports that the strategy is working for McCain.
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Poll: McCain's attack strategy paying dividends

In the course of the McCain offensive, Obama's lead in a Gallup Poll tracking survey slid from nine percentage points on July 26, when he returned from overseas, to nothing by Saturday, when the poll showed the candidates tied at 44 percent...

So there you go. McCain's own claim to superior "character" as a war hero and self-styled political reformer goes out the window--as soon as he abandons his vow to "avoid the kind of negative tactics" the Bush camp used against him. The "he's a hero" stuff is gone, as soon as he drops issue-oriented campaigning in favor of a strategy of character assassination in the tradition of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.

Why does that? Because it works. The negative, the character assassination worked against him, when GWB kicked his ass and humiliated him in the 2000 primary. It worked against Kerry, when Rove and the party and their media twisted a genuine war hero's record and reputation into a perversion of the reality. It almost worked against Gore--they typed him as a untrustworthy narcissist and elitist--the media reiterated the meme for them and the conservatives on the Supreme Court did the rest.

It didn't work against Clinton. They threw everything they had at him prior to the election, particularly the womanizing, and the media went for that like alligators after chicken parts. But it didn't work, that time--conventional wisdom has it that Clinton had an effective rapid response team to counter the negative storyline, but I say it was the Perot vote splitting that put him over, in the first election.

Go back further: going negative against Dukakis in '88 worked. The GOP voters and middle class swing voters liked the Reagan presidency, and though they were lukewarm about Bush the First--Reagan made it clear that Bush the First was his anointed successor. Still--Dukakis came out of the Dem convention leading in the polls by double-digits; it seemed that America was ready for a change.

And that double-digit lead dried up and blew away after Bush and Atwater went negative. The most notorious incident was the race-baiting, soft-on-crime Willie Horton ad--but that was merely the most visible point of a GOP strategy to destroy the character and credibility of Mike Dukakis.

It worked. So now that it's beginning to work again, now that McCain is officially adopting the character assasination strategy that makes GOP presidents, now that that strategy constantly practiced on conservative broadcasting *is* the McCain strategy:

We will get a chance to see what Democrats have learned over the past twenty five years about the most formidable weapon in the conservative political arsenal. The weapon that can make the preferred candidate of a base of twenty-five to thirty per cent of the voters, into the president of the United States--regardless of their stand on particular issues.

We will see if Barack Obama, his team, and the Democratic machine have learned how they can counter that; turn it around. We will see if the netroots can make as much difference in turning polls around, as they have made in political fundraising.

I know, this is only one polling cycle, and McCain has deep and inherent weaknesses--age, ignorance, wilfullness and arrogance; special interests and lobbying ties, a phony conversion to conservatism. But--in my opinion as a Machiavellian--character assassination is exactly what he needs to do to beat Obama. It's the proven "royal road to victory" for the GOP and the conservative movement, and they certainly can't run on their record in office.

Character assassination is the Republican's game, and the mainstream media are their witting and unwitting allies. This year, with no incumbent and no splitter candidate to aid the Dems--we will see if the they finally figured out a way to stop the worst and most effective strategy in American politics.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080803/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_obama_poll&printer=1;_ylt=At5FzFqoCpLYoBFhHmkzNm5h24cA