Now That Targeting Limbaugh Has Flopped, Democrats Taking Aim At Palin
Which is a lot better target for them, I think, given that Sarah doesn’t have an audience of tens of millions for three hours a day. She’s got enemies within the party who either blame her for McCain’s loss or want to hamstring her before 2012. And, she is (at least right now) a favorite for the GOP nomination in 2012.
Plus, thanks to the bumbling of the McCain campaign, the media was able to brand her as a stupid, air headed rube before she really got a chance to make any other impression on the national stage.
Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking.
James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell.
“Her name conjures up all kinds of reactions in people’s minds,” Carville told me, adding that her association with the campaign will be used to portray the GOP as hidebound and to alienate moderates. “She’s an uncomfortable figure for a lot of Republicans,” Carville says. “They want to move beyond her. We like her.”
“Luckily, she seems to present us with an opportunity every few days,” added a senior Dem strategist. “You could say it’s a turkey shoot.”
What’s funny is seeing Carville and his fellow liberals move on after their Limbaugh strategy fell flat on its face.
Will attacking Palin fare better? Probably, for all the reasons I listed above, but the real issue her is that the Democrats are constantly having to set up straw men to attack viciously to distract from what is amounting to rather underwhelming leadership from Obama himself.
