For example, the American public will hear a lot about how National Journal ranked Obama the most liberal member of the Senate in its annual survey published this year, an assessment of voting records that is hard to refute without sounding wonky. Obama's Illinois Senate record might draw even more fire. The Barack Obama depicted in the Republican playbook voted for tax hike after tax hike, was staunchly pro-choice on abortion (even on votes that seem to have been engineered by the opposition to be politically damaging), didn't take a position on votes to toughen drug penalties and pushed to require undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses.
That Barack Obama barely registers in the public consciousness now -- Clinton can't use those issues against him in the primaries because many Democrats might not object to them. But GOP strategists can't wait to tell all the independents and Republicans who have been voting for Obama this year how he is, well, basically another John Kerry. Or maybe Michael Dukakis. Take your pick.
"He's tried to give voters the impression that he transcends partisan politics, but his record is extremely liberal and overtly partisan," said Alex Conant, an RNC spokesman. "I think when you talk about wanting to reject old politics, [Obama's record] is the definition of old politics." For a candidate whose message is about moving the country past divisive political battles, that could be an effective line of attack. Even more than depicting him as a true liberal, Republicans want to turn Obama into just another politician, to blunt his charisma and post-partisan appeal.
Republicans' best chance to counter Obama's appeal to voters may come when gifts like Wright's incendiary rhetoric surface. Following a report on "Good Morning America" about Wright's past sermons, the reverend's comments became a fixture on Rush Limbaugh's show and on "Hannity & Colmes." Polling already shows Wright's most inflammatory remarks offend a lot of voters. Just imagine if Wright showed up again in an ad on television in October. "Those film clips are pretty devastating," Wadhams said with some relish. And Limbaugh, naturally, has already gone ballistic. "No country wants a president who is a member of a church with this kind of radicalism as its mainstream," he fumed on Monday.
Obama acknowledged, again, in his speech on race on Tuesday how close the two men have been for two decades; there's no question that Wright has been influential enough in Obama's life to merit some scrutiny. And talking about Wright means Republicans don't have to talk about race directly. Instead, they can just remind voters -- over and over again -- that Obama's minister sometimes strays onto radical rhetorical ground. If doing that makes people less comfortable with electing the first black president, so be it.
"Instead of distancing himself and moving past this moment, he sort of owns it now," Republican strategist Kevin Madden argued after Obama's speech. (Madden worked for Mitt Romney's campaign, which went through equally thorny contortions over religion.) "Barack Obama, before all this, was at a point where his appeal transcended race. He was somebody that voters -- white and black both -- looked at as a candidate not viewed through the prism of white or black. [Now] he has become that."
These kinds of attacks might be even more pernicious than obvious lies about Obama's religious background, which made their way around the country by e-mail last year (naturally, without a named source). But unlike refuting the charges in those e-mails that he attended madrassas as a child, Obama can't just shrug off the more sophisticated tactics as false.
Instead, he has to get voters to move past them -- a problem Obama has recognized. "We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day, and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words," he said Tuesday. "We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change."
But it's one thing to know what's coming and to condemn it. It's another to beat it back. Hillary Clinton has insisted all through the campaign that her own battles with the GOP in the 1990s taught her how to survive -- even thrive on -- nasty attacks. For Obama to secure the Democratic nomination, he may have to persuade party insiders that he can do the same thing.
About the writer
Mike Madden is Salon's Washington correspondent. A complete listing of his articles is here.
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