The Low-Road Warrior

[RedEarth]

The Low-Road Warrior
Mudslinging will damage McCain’s brand—but it may be the only way he can win

......

Many of McCain’s advisers from 2000, such as John Weaver and Mike Murphy, express qualms about the campaign’s newly nasty tone. (One can only imagine the sigh of relief emanating from Mark McKinnon, the heralded adman who helped McCain win the nomination but whose aversion to taking a cleaver to Obama caused him to sit out the general.) “In this kind of year—a change election, with big issues at stake—that sort of campaign is not gonna be in a voice the American people can understand,” Weaver tells me. “And at some point, John will need the goodwill that he spent years achieving.” And you think he’s in danger of losing that? “This is not a cost-free exercise,” he says.



But Weaver, Murphy, and McKinnon are no longer guiding McCain. Instead, the motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004 , Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparently concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses—on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate—are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House. They’ve concluded, in other words, that even if McCain may not be able to win the election in any affirmative sense, he might still wind up behind the big desk if he and his people can strip the bark off Obama with sufficiently vicious force.



http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/48928/

[Uncle Joe]

1. I don't believe any candidate's mudslinging wins the race,

it's the corporate media carrying said candidate's bucket of mud and slinging it for them that has effect.

I believe Karl Rove would be *draining septic tanks for a living if the oligarchs and mega corporations which own the corporate media hadn't empowered his message of distortion without regard to the truth all to suit their own corporate loving agenda.

It doesn't take intelligence to come up with a lie and have a corrupted press carry it for you when the falsehood benefits the press while betraying the people's interest. It just takes self-serving corruption.

* No offense to the professional septic tank drainers of America intended.

[Demeter]

2. Exactly, Uncle Joe

If mud is thrown, and it doesn't hit the 6 o'clock news, then did it happen at all?

Our total lack of impeachment stems from this very problem--a failure to communicate to the public what the public wants and needs to know.