McCain's Mudslinging & The Season Of The Conservative Pundit's Discontent

Times could not be tougher for the John McCain-Sarah Palin punditocracy.

It's bad enough that the approval rating of George Bush, their hero of the last eight years, has reached an historic low. And inconveniently for these Bubba Bashers, Bill Clinton ended his second term with a robust 70 percent rating despite lying about sex.

Or that the revolution fostered by Ronald Reagan, their hero of the last century, has been sacrificed at the altar of greed through a deregulation movement nurtured by now panicked conservatives who have become what they long railed against -- big-government socialists.

While all of that is bad enough, there is the sorry spectacle of McCain, who while not of the hero class because he used to get all mavericky, is bottom feeding his way to an ignominious climax in the most important presidential election since another big-government socialist defeated Herbert Hoover.

Truth be known, McCain may not have done much better by conducting an honorable campaign. Or by choosing a running mate who is not a cipher.

Still, McCain could have tried. He could have tried by playing to his long suit -- experience. He could have held onto his shaky base while dialing back the partisan cant and embracing voters desperate for change through an issues-oriented campaign as a pragmatic Washington insider who is willing to break with the pack and shake things up. In other words, truly embrace the notion of change and not merely steal that meme from Barack Obama.

But just as we'll never know if the War on Terror would have turned out differently if sufficient resources had been put into Afghanistan and not diverted to Iraq, we'll never know how McCain would have fared if he had taken the high road.

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Speaking of dirt, I took a survey of pro-McCain blogs, including the big aggregators like Townhall and Pajamas Media, to see if anyone was taking McCain and Palin to task for their final descent into slime.

What I found was that while there was a little panic, plenty of amnesia and busy deck chair rearranging, not one of these pundits were troubled. Or suggested that McCain throw another Hail Mary pass by again "suspending" campaigning and blowing off tonight's debate so he could personally shore up the hemorrhaging Dow Jones Industrial Average.

A sampling:

Jules Crittenden, always ready with a military analogy at Forward Movement, channels Horatio Nelson and "Commodore Rove" and beseeches McCain and Palin to "attack, attack, attack."

Alas, the tendentious Jonah Goldberg has nothing better to write about at The Corner at this most crucial juncture than old left-wing magazine interviews with the flaming Bill Ayers.

At least fellow The Corner traveler Mark Levin provides some substance (cough, cough) in arguing that the Keating Five scandal is small beer compared to Obama's "belief system," which has made him the darling of "domestic terrorists, Palestinian radicals, Marxists, and black liberation ideologues."

Stuck with lemons, Michelle Malkin makes lemonade: People are again picking on Baby Trig, Obama's wife was perennially dissatisfied in her old job, and the usual whinging from a woman who has so endeared herself to right wingnuts.

Rick Moran, who seems to be recovering from his boy crush on Palin as he realizes that come-hither looks and winsome head nods are no substitute for substance, has that sinking feeling at Rightwing Nuthouse. He's all for name calling, mind you, but fears that it "may backfire."

Gerard Vanderleun, whose anger-management problems mask one of the keenest intellects in conservative blogging, rants away at American Digest, but fails to give himself credit for the McCain campaign taking his own well-traveled road.

Oh, dear.

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Sharp-eyed readers will notice the absence of any mention of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose vetting during the primary season was exhaustive and exhausting.

This is because focusing on the ravings of Obama's former pastor, whom he has denounced, would invite opening the door to the ravings of Palin's longtime and current pastor and their own particularly kooky brand of Christianity.

While McCain and Palin are playing the guilt-by-association game, Obama and Biden will repeatedly note in the coming days that McCain played a central role in the last great U.S. financial crisis -- the savings-and-loan scandal that nearly destroyed his political career -- subsequently fought against institutional reforms, and has had as his chief economic adviser the one person most responsible for the economic meltdown.

While Republicans can hope that some voters change their minds, the economy isn't listening.

Publius writes at Obsidian Wings that "Political campaigns are the ultimate Darwinian environment. Whatever strategy wins passes its genes on to the next campaign. Atwater won. Rove won. And so they live on even today. It didn’t matter that they used slimy tactics. So long as these tactics succeeded . . . . they would inevitably reemerge in future campaigns."

There is only one way to end the slime -- and that is to win.

That is what Barack Obama will do four weeks from now as the coda to John McCain's career is written in the gutter.

Image: A Far Side classic by Gary Larson