GOP Strategy: Speak Heartland, Slime Obama

In a must-read online exclusive for Newsweek, Jeremy McCarter makes clear how and why people like Fred Thompson speak a certain "language" that connects with many Americans in a way that Democrats---with few exceptions---simply lack:

"Heartland isn't a foreign language; it's not even a dialect. It's a combination of certain words and certain visuals that add up to describe a worldview. It works via careful balance. So you hear, for instance, the lofty language of ancient and patriotic glory, of martial and heroic valor, but juxtaposed with a tone of Pepperidge Farm. Heartland thumps its chest and knows its strength, but labors under the existential dread of gathering foreign threat. Heartland also loves—loves—metaphor. Thus, a question of fiscal policy, in the hands of as skilled a practitioner as Thompson, becomes: "They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the 'other' side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.".....

But last night saw a curious twist on those affirmations of patriotism. Throughout the evening--too frequently for it to be coincidence—love of country was held up as something demonstrated through physical suffering and death. Each occurrence was honorable and just; it's the pile-up that begins to seem off-putting: a quick shot of Reagan waving from hospital window, a voice-over saying "no one can take away what our flag symbolizes" as a widow is presented with one in a cemetery, a biographical film about Mike Monsoor, the Navy SEAL who threw himself on a grenade. Even Abraham Lincoln was described, over an illustration of John Wilkes Booth's fatal shot, as one who served "the country he had put first, before self."

From where I sit, the McCain campaign has decided that their best and only strategy for retaining the Presidency is threefold: 1) drive home relentlessly the "unique" character of their candidate while minimizing precise policy prescriptions; 2) present their ticket as a pair of "maverick reformers" (see this week's Newsweek cover) who will shake up Washington and
3) hire the most effective political bomb-throwers for inside the campaign (including the guy who slimed McCain for Bush in 2000) while urging their big contributors to channel money to 527 organizations that can do their worst against Obama with no accountability or direct ties to the campaign.

- Richard Holcomb