The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s.
Look, RNC officials know the difference between a clean attack and a dirty one. They recognize when an attack is driven by race-based politics, and when one is substantive and above-board. The only reason they would need a focus group to help them out on this is if they planned to walk right up to the decency line, and wanted to know how far they could go without crossing it.
I'd say they're really trying to find out how far over the line they can go without getting caught.
Update:
Looks like I was right on that one -- this, from Politico:
The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s. . . .
Republicans will be told to “be sensitive to tone and stick to the substance of the discussion” and that “the key is that you have to be sensitive to the fact that you are running against historic firsts,” the strategist explained.
Of course, they could always based their campaign on policy issues. Oh, wait -- the country hates their policies. Well, stick with the sleaze -- it's all you've got left.
The second, from John Amato on the "patriotism" smear, is nice and succinct, and leaves the argument to Obama -- who, by the way, is responding in the way that I've been wishing for a Democrat to respond for years.
“A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?
“That is a debate I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism.”
Here's the post by Glenn Greenwald that forms the basis of Amato's comments. Greenwald nails it:
By far, the most significant pattern in how our political discourse is shaped is that the right-wing noise machine generates scurrilous, petty, personality-based innuendo about Democratic candidates, and the establishment press then mindlessly repeats it and mainstreams it. Thus, nothing was more predictable than watching the "Obamas-are-unpatriotic-subversives" slur travel in the blink of an eye from the Jack Kingstons, Fox News adolescent McCarthyites, and Bill Kristols of the world to AP, MSNBC, and CNN. That's just how the right-wing/media nexus works.
Far more notable is Barack Obama's response to these depressingly familiar attacks. In response, he's not scurrying around slapping flags all over himself or belting out the National Anthem, nor is he apologizing for not wearing lapels, nor is he defensively trying to prove that -- just like his Republican accusers -- he, too, is a patriot, honestly. He's not on the defensive at all. Instead, he's swatting away these slurs with the dismissive contempt they deserve, and then eagerly and aggressively engaging the debate on offense because he's confident, rather than insecure, about his position.
I recommend Greenwald's post. If, like me, you've been under a rock for the past few days, this is all coming out of a scurrilous piece of trash by Nedra Pickler circulated by AP, w hich is nothing more than another example of the press mainstreaming another right-wing swiftboat campaign. It's really a piece of tripe. Here's Greenwald's report on that one (item 2).
I'm starting to think that, even though I don't agree with a lot of his policy positions, Obama has the right stuff.
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