Did the McCain campaign over reach with the Great Lipstick Caper?
They weren't off-base with the concept. When you see a clip of Barack using the lipstick line, the reaction is - "he's talking about Palin!" That's how it feels, and that's why the crowd reacted with such excitement - it wouldn't have been a standing ovation line without the linkage to Palin.
By hitting him so hard on it, McCain's campaign gave Barack the opportunity to cry, "old school politics," while raising the ire of the mainstream media - which doesn't want to be embarrassed for it's willingness to focus on the sensational.
On ABC News, Lipstick was the lead story. But the Jake Tapper report focused almost exclusively on Barack as victim, and McCain barely made the segment. And CBS had Youtube pull the ad because it didn't like Katie Couric being used in it.
The idea of chasing a theme like this for the McCain campaign is to 1) control the conversation, and 2) reinforce the negative feelings that women voters might hold for Barack. But it could be pushing this sort of tactic out of the fun zone and into the cheap politics realm - potentially reaching a tipping point that could create a backlash against McCain.
The tone of this campaign could change and the momentum could shift - over lipstick.
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2 comments:
The right-wing talking heads are up to their old tricks of distortion and distraction by playing the self-righteous victim over Barack Obama's 'lipstick on a pig' reference to the McCain campaign's claim to be change agents.
As usual, the news media is all over this little manufactured spat. However, I have not heard anyone mention another way of looking at this thing. Could it be argued that the G.O.Pig represents a continuation of the past eight years of bankrupt policies, and Sarah Palin is the young attractive lipstick that has been applied to this pig to make it more appealing?
QuestionItNow
Todd,
This was a mistake by McCain. He then compunded the problem by trotting out Jane Swift, the anti-Palin.
Kevin
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