Time to Kick Butt

The numbers are in on what the public thought of Ms. Alaska Moose-Gutting, Gun-Totin', War-Mongering, Creationism-Preaching Sarah Palin's speech night before last. They have given the Republican party--a party bankrupt of ideas, up to its eyeballs in cronyism and corruption, and guilty of running the country into a ditch it will take maybe a couple of generations to get out of, if we're extremely fortunate--a huge rush. Glenn Greenwald reports that 60 percent of the people that heard the speech gave her an A, and 58 percent of the American people give her a favorable rating. Two weeks ago nobody knew who she was. (My fellow observer of the human condition over at Trench Warfare has some incisive observations about Ms Moose-Gutter. See her September 2 entry.)

Greenwald reports these numbers in the context of a piece that argues once again (he wrote at more length on the subject yesterday) that since the Republicans cannot possibly run on the issues, their campaign rests and will rest on relentless vicious personal attacks on Obama and his character. And the Democrats will just roll over and take it. The idea that Americans recoil from negativity in political campaigns is nonsense. These attacks work, especially on a people as uninformed and unsophisticated as Americans. They've worked since Reagan. Here's Greenwald:

The idea that Americans instinctively recoil from negativity or that there will be some sort of backlash against Republicans generally and Palin specifically because of how "negative" their convention speeches were is pure fantasy. Cultural tribalism and personality attacks of those sort work, especially when they're not aggressively engaged.counter-productive. And every four years, that belief is disproven.

Every four years, the GOP unleashes unrestrained personality attacks on Democrats and exploits cultural resentments. Every four years, Democrats tell themselves that such attacks don't work and are counter-productive. And every four years, that belief is disproven.

Look what these guys did to John Kerry, no less a war hero than McCain, and running against Bush-Cheney, a couple of war slackers! It is going to be far, far worse with Obama. It's high time that the Democrats "aggressively engage" the slanders and lies that will continue to gush from GOP campaign machinery. They will increase in frequency and intensity now that the campaign has officially launched. The Democrats not going to win this election playing patty-cake with a bunch of slanderous sharks. They need to take off the gloves, stop bowing to McCain's POW experience and kissing his ass, and start taking him to task for the low road he's taking. I really cannot believe the American people are going to choke in this smokescreen again!