The Obama-Rules

by Rich Lowry

"Here are the Obama rules in detail: He can't be called a "liberal" ("the same names and labels they pin on everyone," as Obama puts it); his toughness on the War on Terror can't be questioned ("attempts to play on our fears"); his extreme positions on social issues can't be exposed ("the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives" and "turn us against each other"); and his Chicago background too is off-limits ("pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy"). Besides that, it should be a freewheeling and spirited campaign.

Democrats always want cultural issues not to matter because they're on the least-popular side of many of them; they want patriotic symbols like the Pledge of Allegiance and flag pins to be irrelevant when they can't manage to nominate presidential candidates who wholeheartedly embrace them (which shouldn't be that difficult). As for "fear" and "division," they are vaporous pejoratives that can be applied to any warning of negative consequences of a given policy or any political position that doesn't command 100 percent assent. In his North Carolina speech, Obama said the Iraq War "has not made us safer," and that McCain's ideas are "out of touch" with "American values." How fearfully divisive.

We could take Obama's rules in good faith if he never calls John McCain a "conservative" or labels him in any other way. If he never criticizes him for his association with George Bush. If he doesn't jump on his gaffes (like McCain's 100-years-in-Iraq comment that Obama distorted and harped on for weeks). And if he never says anything that would tend to make Americans fearful about the future or divide them (i.e., say things that some people agree with and others don't).

This is, of course, an impossible standard. Obama doesn't expect anyone to live up to it except John McCain."

The liberals know full well that it is impossible for them to win on an even playing field, so what to do?

Enlist the ever-friendly Yellowstream Media to blanket the air and net waves with Obama's message, while shunning McCain's as dirty politics. It worked when Bill Clinton ran for President, it worked when Hillary ran for the Senate, and it has worked, boy has it EVER worked for Algore in his attempt to scare us into giving him money and more fame than he ever had as a do-nothing, brain-dead VP to BJ Willy's Traveling Damnation Show And Discount House of Buy-America's Secrets Here.

Make no mistake about it, it works. Even though there are dissenting voices filtering through the liberal echo chamber...us...too many people believe that America is in a recession even while experiencing job growth, that the war on terror is going rather badly even though we haven't been attacked in, what time is it now, 7 years, and that so-what we've had the coldest winters in memory, the converse is correct and its actually getting warmer.

I blame it on Harry Houdini. If he hadn't made the art of slight-of-hand so popular, the democrats wouldn't have a playbook from which to perform their "the lie is quicker than the eye" vaudeville routines that do work so very well.