John McCain has largely abandonded the negative approach during these last two weeks and that’s probably a good idea. People really do want to hear what he’s going to do and they need positive leadership. BUT…
Say what you want but it works and the reason it works is the same reason people say they hate it: it forces them to confront inconvenient truths about their candidate. No one likes to be disappointed but our job now is to point out those inconvenient truths. With a great deal of effort John McCain can still attract enough undecided voters to almost win. With just a little more effort from his surrogates and supporters he can get more than enough smart, thoughtful, Obama supporters to abandon their candidate.
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Affiliations. Ayers, Wright, Acorn, etc. His affiliation with these people certainly shows bad judgment and is enlightening about how he thinks about the world but that’s been hammered home. What I haven’t heard is anyone asking “What is it about the philosophy and promise of the young Barack Obama that so inspires men who hate America so much they are willing to destroy it or damn it? Of all the young politicians coming up in the Chicago Machine, Bill Ayers chose Barack Obama as the guy whose career he wanted to launch. Obama can run from them but he can’t run from the fact that HE’s the guy they and people like them support.
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ACORN. Barack Obama gave $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. There can be only two conclusions:A. He actively supports a group that intentionally commits voter fraud, or at least tries to cause enough chaos with voter registration fraud that the election officials are overwhelmed and can’t catch real voter fraud after it occurs. Both are felonies.
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B. He is so sloppy with how he spends money that he gives almost a million dollars to a group that hires felons for critical positions and cannot control their employees enough to keep them from committing felonies themselves.
B, at least means he is not guilty of conspiracy to commit voter fraud so let’s assume that’s the case. Can we really afford a president who funds organizations who are not willing to be accountable for the actions of their employees? What does that say about how he’ll run his administration?
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Taxes. We need to use the WSJ article about the 95% Illusion as a sledge hammer. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html?mod=googlenews_wsj). Taxes are a way for the government to get revenue. Using them to take money from businesses and 5% of the population to and give it to the rest, whether they contribute to the economy or not, in an effort to “spread the wealth around” is not patriotic. It’s socialism. Are we so arrogant as to think that after the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and all the others failed at it that we could do better? The McCain camp has been successful with this tack and it shows in Obama’s decission to add a work requirement. That means his tax cuts only apply to those with jobs the pay less than $250k. Those that are recently unemployed are out of luck.
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Taxes on business. There is no such thing as a business or a corporation. There are only people. Most of the 95% of the people who would get a “tax cut” (really a refundable tax credit) under Obama’s plan own, invest in, work for, or buy things from businesses. If you raise corporate taxes to 42.5% (42.5%!!!!) to pay for the $860 billion in new spending and entitlements many of those people who own a business will lose it, who invest in other’s businesses will lose their money, who work for businesses will lose their jobs, and all of us who buy things from businesses will pay more because the businesses will have to embed those tax increases in the cost of their products.
When people complain about negative campaigning the answer is that they simply do not want to face the inconvenience of the truth they should have recognized had they only looked a little closer.
