GOP Reverend Wright Ad

[Myst Warrior]

Apparently, the "Republican National Trust" GOP political 527 has now released an ad about Obama's associations with Wright. I just saw the ad on NBC: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_ro...0/27/you_knew/

Now, McCain had officially declared Obama's associations with Wright completely off-limits for his campaign, in commercials, debates, or even speeches. What, then does this say about our electoral process?

More specifically, do you think it is a coincidence this was released so soon before the election (only one week)? Do you think that the Republican National Committee was behind it, and went behind McCain's back? Or do you believe that McCain actually broke his word? Is this a last, desperate ploy?

Personally, I can't believe that he gave this the go-ahead, and I doubt this was connected as directly to the McCain camp as, say, Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth was to Bush's. It still stands, however, that the presidential nominee was unable to keep this subject off the airwaves, a telling sign of his lack of control over his own party.

I understand 527s are not directly under the control of their party, but really? Running this ad on major networks takes a LOT of money, and someone in the party had to find out about it.

[Mike McC]

Political parties/commitees have always operated indepently of a candidate in mudslinging. They pick up what they percieve to be slack in the candidates ads, and really they probably don't care what the candidate thinks of it, they're in it for thier party to win.

[Wigmund]

I just take it as a sign of desperation on the part of the Republicans.
It's retrieve the kitchen sink that's been thrown multiple times before (by Hilary's campaign during the primaries, by Fox News - especially Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly - since Obama appeared on the national stage) and try throwing it at Obama again...and again...and again...and expect different results than before.

I mean look at it, it failed in the primaries, it's failed so far for McCain's campaign (Wright's been mentioned, directly or indirectly, by supporters and Palin), what do the RNC 527's expect the weekend before Election Day? That suddenly everyone will go "Oh my god, Obama's former pastor was a total dick, we shouldn't vote for Obama because of that!"?

[Ben_Fox]

It's a time-honored tradition known as "plausible deniability." It's nothing more than an attempt to have your cake and eat it too; the mud gets slung but you get to act like you're better than that because your campaign did not and would never do such a thing and you're shocked, shocked! that anyone else would stoop so low.

See also: John McCain's black baby, Swift Boat Veterans for False, etc, etc.

[Kim]

You say it doesn't work, but it does. Not on intelligent human beings who go out of their way to research the facts, but it'll work on some of the less intelligent citizens.

[Ben_Fox]

A general trend in recent years has been for independent and undecided voters to actually punish those candidates and parties they view as being overly negative. Consider New Hampshire, which McCain still had a reasonable chance of contesting, if not carrying up until his "domestic terrorist" attack ads started running--in the course of a week he went from being within the margin of error in the polls to facing a double-digit deficit. He has since all but conceded New Hampshire to Obama and the final round of attack ads is slowly dwindling down off the air.

Eight years of hyper-partisan politics have taken their tolls on the ranks of the political parties; as the original perpetrators and beneficiaries of this particular tactic (EDIT: This time around), the GOP is receiving its political comeuppance first--we naturally associate "sleazy attack ad" with "Republican PAC." The Democrats will find their own heads on the block in turn if they don't learn the lessons that are being so viciously taught to the Republicans this election cycle.

[Sky Warrior Bob]

Originally Posted by NonCon

You say it doesn't work, but it does. Not on intelligent human beings who go out of their way to research the facts, but it'll work on some of the less intelligent citizens.

Well it won't work against the early voting (which have already been locked in), and while negative ads can work, they usually don't work twice. Also, they can backfire, especially if the candidate isn't really all that close. McCain is far enough behind that it cries out desperation.

Especially after running the go nowhere Ayers associations for weeks on end.

Its like watching the same horror movie over & over. Sooner or later, the shock value is gone & you start noticing the rubber masks & tomato paste.

Wright would have a lot more street cred, if Hillary didn't play that card already. After Obama's very good speech on race & his later denouncement, Wright has lost his sting.

SWB

[Solid Snake]

Essentially, the Republican National Committee is taken a few out-of-context quotes from Wright, a religious leader of a black community with no particular interest in politics, in order to smear Obama. I'm not the biggest fan of "radical black churches" and I do suspect there are a few churches that do actually preach racist ideology, but I'm not really sure to what extent Wright's church actually "fits the bill." I'd probably be a little harsher on Wright if not for the fact that one of my own favorite pastors has a similar "politically-incorrect-foot-in-mouth-syndrome," where every once in a long while during a lengthy sermon something will slip out of his mouth that just comes out awkward. I mean, my favorite pastor from the District was white and fairly conservative, but he went on a rant once about how our inner city sister church, which was predominantly African-American, was being slighted and he accused unnamed government officials who were responsible for nullifying a lease of racism. When you're a pastor, you just tackle tough issues like that.

Maybe I'm giving Wright too much the benefit of the doubt, but my guess is he's a pastor inciting his church into societal change, trying to get his constituents to think deeply about important issues, and so he's ranting about how African Americans suffer disproportionately and he's getting upset and so he invokes "The US of KKK." I don't think Wright is really saying "I truly believe the United States is evil and the KKK runs everything and blacks need to rise up and start killing white people." I think he's saying, "as a pastor, I'm going to exaggerate a tad because that's what pastors often do, but what I'm really attempting to achieve involves my community rising up against a specific case of injustice. I don't really think the U.S. is evil, the government just made one bad decision and I'm calling them out on it in the most flagrant way possible."

It's sort of similar to my personal belief that most "pro-life" supporters don't really want to ban abortion, they just want to alter the moral permissibility of abortions in modern society, but in the process they succumb to arguments concocted by extremist minorities or they simply attach themselves to extremist ideology under the flawed assumption that doing so adamantly will force a "compromise." Or my belief that most "anti-war" folks aren't actually explicitly in favor of all forces leaving Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, but by being as angry and demanding as possible in rallies they hope their agitation leads to reasonable "compromise." It's the moderate's conundrum -- you have to take on extremist language in arguments in order to achieve concessions to make your comparatively moderate positions negotiable. If moderates otherwise were simply like "hey, here's my totally boring and dull plan for tiny pieces of incremental change," who the hell would be interested? So if Wright's like, "the U.S. is a little teensy bit racist, they're ever so slightly discriminatory" that's not going to accomplish anything for his constituents, even if that's what he really believes. He has to shout racism from the rooftops and exaggerate the problems.

[Zilla]

I watched a video that was already trying to demonize his sermons, but it failed to implicate him of anything but inciting people to recognize discrimination. Couple his preaching in a fiery Southern Baptist way with the slap-on-the-wrist message he delivers about judging people based on their skin, and you might be able to squeeze out a few drops of hate-mongering if you're desperate enough, and have also been successful in getting blood from a stone.