Josh Marshall caught a telling soundbite:
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign’s factual claims: “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Looks like the honorable old John McCain won’t be calling his campaign back from fringe crazytown. The decision was no doubt clinched when they introduced Sarah Palin with a press conference full of lies. Maybe I’m giving the campaign too much credit, but in those bizarre first few days the campaign most likely had no idea that Sarah Palin is a compulsive liar. Judging by reports in the news, the McCain camp realized how deep they were in it around the same time that we did. This is the kind of trouble that the GOP avoided when it jettisoned Jack Ryan for lying to them about his dirty divorce.
But as they say, in for a penny in for a pound. By convention time the McCain camp could either toss Palin or toss their credibility, but choice A would turn the campaign into an instant joke. Choice B would drag the party’s reputation to a place reserved to crack junkies and tobacco executives, but at least there’s an outside chance that tMcCain and Palin can lie and bluff their way to victory in November. God knows Republicans have leveraged the media’s inability to deal with shameless bullshitters into victory before.
This approach is basically the same as shooting the moon in Hearts, a strategy where a player with a terrible hand goes for a perverse win state that requires taking in every negative card in the game. Shooting the moon only works if you take every demerit card. Take all but one and you end up with a score so bad that you might as well quit and go home. It’s an all or nothing move.
The analogy here isn’t that the McCain campaign went all in; every candidate goes all in. Nobody in a political campaign goes home with half the pot. The McCain team is shooting the moon. They can’t apologize for the bullshit and they can’t back off. If you think that John McCain has run “the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history”, you’ll love what’s coming next.
maxbaer (not the original)
It’s good to live in interesting times according to the Chinese. Bring it on!
Conservatively Liberal
I have been expecting this because the same people who pushed Bush to the top are now working on doing the same for McCain. What happened to him in 2000 is going to pale next to this election season and the way they are going to crap all over everything to win. With race in the mix, you know it is going to get damn ugly. McCain tied his cart to these horses and they are going to give us all one wild ride until election day.
McCain said that the worst he could do is sell his soul to the devil and it looks like that was his decision. Now he has his lipstick on a dipstick and he is going for broke.
I hope McCain and Palin end up breaking the Republican party for many many years. They deserve it.
RSA
Outside chance? electoral-vote.com has McCain up by 2, for the first time in months, IIRC, and intrade.com has McCain above 50%, for the first time ever. I expect that when (if?) people realize McCain/Palin is just lying to them, no matter what they say, things may change. . .
The Grand Panjandrum
Governor Palin is still telling the “selling the jet on Ebay” lie so I rather doubt they are concerned about truth. According to Frank Luntz (yes that Frank Luntz) the line that is resonating with people is Palin’s line about how much small town American’s love America. The tell here is that as long as you make sure to point out how much “average” Americans “love America” they will vote for you. Luntz better be wrong or this country really has gone down the Rabbit Hole, as it were.
I should have paid more attention to the Right Wing Shill on CSPAN this morning, but she called out a caller to the show for being elitist, very much in the same fashion Barack Obama is an elitist. Evidently, Governor Palin’s as yet born grandchild will be an elitist, what with being the child of an unwed mother and all. Or maybe Obama is an elitist because he had an African father? I don’t know, it is a bit confusing to understand how one is an elitist. Clearly being a the son and grandson of Navy admirals, and dump your loyal (and severely injured wife) for a beauty queen, drug addict, heiress doesn’t count as elitist. But who knew?
However, last night while out here eating some excellent pizza near our undisclosed here in New Hampshire I saw a union worker carrying an Obama sign. I then over heard an older couple, at the next table comment that they were couldn’t believe they would voting for the same candidate as “union activists”!
Lavocat
You nailed it, fellow hearts-player! I thought of this analogy as well, in the first few days after the choice of Palin, since the McCain campaign seemed to lapse into a Bizarro world of saying one thing and doing the EXACT opposite. The disconnect was so stark as to be surreal.
Have they resurrected Goebbels to direct McCain’s endgame? It sure as hell seems that way.
celcus
Given the hand that McCain was dealt/inherited, shooting the moon really may be his best option.
Matt McIrvin
Judging by reports in the news, the McCain camp realized how deep they were in it around the same time that we did. This is the kind of trouble that the GOP avoided when it jettisoned Jack Ryan for lying to them about his dirty divorce.
Avoided? They replaced him with Alan Keyes and lost the election to none other than Barack Obama by a ridiculous landslide. I’d say that’s still trouble. I’d guess they’d look at that result and decide that it’s better to keep their people in and just keep lying more and more brazenly. What have they got to lose? On the chance that it works, what is anybody going to do about it?
Hubris
Actually, the shoot the moon strategy* could work for them. Take the “media filter” as implemented in the NYT story. Self-identified Democrats are already convinced, self-identified Republicans will chalk it up to liberal media bias, and most self-identified independents (I’m one) will ignore facts altogether and go with their “gut.” I’m starting to think that the only thing that would swing mo’ back to Obama-Biden would be (pretty likely, I think) debate shellackings.
*I grew up playing Rook, where this bid meant you were going to take all 180 points. Cartomancy is the devil’s work, Hearts players.
Incertus
That’s actually a Chinese curse, but okay. There is something to be said for living in bland but competently governed times, after all.
Conservatively Liberal
Don’t know how long this will be up but check out this McCain site! Click on the Enter Site to see what I am talking about.
H/T to Kos.
McCain Foods?! French fries?!
PK
In 200 yrs we went from George Washington-I cannot tell a lie to Sarah Palin -I cannot tell the truth.
liberatemeiexinfernis
you have this all wrong John. The majority of ignorant bumblefucks that make up the GOP are thrilled to have Palin and will vote for her because she represents everything, even if it is symbolic, that goes against the progressive bent. They know what an Obama administration will do, ie reverse all of Bush’s disastrous policies, be it economic, environmental, social, fiscal etc…and that is something Republicans cannot take. They know they have a fighting chance with Sarah and they are making a bet that most people (especially those working class Reagan Democrats and “Walmart moms”) are dumb and ill informed enough that if they could vote for Bush in 2004, they will vote for Palin this time. And you know what, there are enough dumb people out there who vote by their gut (“can I have a beer with her”?). They would rather vote against their economic self interest than go with a party that doesnt support a nation at war no matter what.
McCain wouldnt be lying so blatantly if he thought there was a chance the American people would call him out on it and hold him responsible.
Keep dreamin. Democrats are fucked.
HRA
What I find very strange out here in NYS is the absence of any lawn signs and very few bumper stickers on the Thruway to work. The few bumper stickers are Obama ones. It’s creepy. This place has always been very political. How is it where you are living?
I must add there is no enthusiasm on my campus as well.
Brian J
Either they did a shitty job in vetting her, or they vetted her, knew this stuff, and just didn’t care. My guess is, it’s the latter. But even if it’s not, they could easily drop most if not all of the lies from the speeches, pretend they didn’t happen, and move on. It’d be ridiculous for them to campaign as reformers, but it’s less ridiculous and more honest if they do it while not repeating garbage like her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere. So as I said in the other thread, this is a gigantic fuck you to the media. They are saying that they will campaign in a way so as to create a willful cloud of confusion about what Palin did purely for an electoral advantage, regardless of what people say or think. The media should take this as a personal affront, because McCain and his cronies are playing them for a bunch of fools. If there’s any justice, this would be an albatross around his neck like no other.
gbear
They must be privately overjoyed that their opponent is a black man. They’re picking up so many demerit voters right there. I hope this country doesn’t prove itself to be insane this november.
aarrgghh
i’ve said it before and it bears repeating:
the republicans aren’t running a campaign. they’re running an experiment for their alien overlords, who want to find out how much 100% unadulterated stinking steaming flyblown bullshit can be mainlined directly into the barely-pumping heart of the american electorate. they have instructions to keep going, like a mosquito trapped at the injection site, until either the gop or the country explodes first.
Bob In Pacifica
Boy, the phrase “fringe crazytown” put this image in my head: the Lowdown Saloon, where Cowboy Karl Rove sits at a bar guzzling down bile while widestance Repubs haunt the men’s room, Jeff Gannon turns tricks in the whorehouse upstairs, and over at a table Sarah Palin spins yarns about all the places she’s never been to while organizing a temperance rally and a march against the town library.
aimai
Bob in Pacifica,
Of course, she wouldn’t be organizing a temperance rally–she’d be talking about the temperance rally she organized while lying about the fact that she fired the old police chief because he tried to move the bar closing time from 5:00 am to 2:am and that wasn’t enough drinkin’ time for Sarah and Todd and their teenagers.
aimai
aimai
Bob in Pacifica,
Of course, she wouldn’t be organizing a temperance rally–she’d be talking about the temperance rally she organized while lying about the fact that she fired the old police chief because he tried to move the bar closing time from 5:00 am to 2:am and that wasn’t enough drinkin’ time for Sarah and Todd and their teenagers.
aimai
Bill H
Similar in SouCal. But I don’t think it’s lack of enthusiasm, it’s more an intimidation factor. A friend of mine has several Obama and Liberal stickers on his car and has had many instances of fingers thrown, angry horns, and a few (admittedly half-hearted) attempts to run him off the road. He had the car parked in his driveway and got the front of his house egged. He has gotten one or two friendly waves, but definitely regrets putting the stickers on the car.
Yeah, California is a Blue state, but San Diego County is a pocket of Republicans. Think Duncan Hunter.
Once-ler
I’ve noticed this too, not very many signs at all. There have been a few Obama signs out for a while, but I hadn’t seen any McCain signs at all until I saw one just yesterday. My area usually leans Democratic, but not by much.
There are million signs out for the local district judge race.
gbear
In Mpls/St. Paul, there are lots of Obama signs all over the place, but some of that is because us Obama folks wanted to show the RNC how we felt. The very few people posting McCain signs tend to get the biggest sign they can get in an effort to shout down the Obama signs. I’d be willing to bet the Twin Cities proper will go 70% for Obama in November.
Apparently most of the restaurants and bars near the RNC are pissed as hell because none of the conventioners went out exploring and all the locals stayed away. It was a total bust for them.
Warren Terra
Just to extend the Hearts metaphor, two related points: (1) the best time to try to Shoot is when the hand you’re dealt contains a lot of strong Negatives; and (2) the only way to be sure of stopping an opponent trying to Shoot is if you’re not too afraid to absorb a small proportion of the Demerits yourself.
Given Obama’s relative reluctance to “go negative”, McCain’s strategy might be his best and only option to win the game he’s playing. As long as it’s all just a game.
justme
Speaking as a Spades player, it almost seems more like a strategy that my compatriots outlawed after I abused it a few too many times, copping a zero bid while holding the ace of spades. You know damned well there is absolutely no way to win the hand, but you might just be able to fuck up everybody else enough so that the running score winds up favoring you.
Daniel
I like the analogy. Actually, where I’m from, hearts players don’t call that move “shooting the moon”. They call it “going for power”. How’s that for a nice extra touch?
demimondian
You know, the metaphor of shooting the moon is a really, really good one. You can only shoot the moon with a terrible hand if everyone else is convinced that you’re actually playing to win.
If the wheels come off that straight-talk express, you’re hosed.
Chuck Butcher
There are card games that I am very good at, Hearts is one. I know how to Shoot the Moon and it doesn’t involve a terrible hand, it involves a hand that is very good at that, Shooting the Moon. The negative outcome of failure is large so you are ill advised to try it without such a hand unless you lose if you don’t, it is a winning strategy if you know when and how to do it.
I appreciate the joke of the reference, though I’m more inclined to one regarding jumping out a 20th story window of a burning building and figuring on hitting a moving mattress truck… You sure look expert if you manage it.