Enough Not Said

With his radical past and slimy friends, Barack remains the most beatable candidate in the world. Yet the people with the money, who could have financed the sort of PR campaign needed to educate voters, have never stepped forward.

“It’s Oct. 21, and if you can’t say it by Oct. 21, then chances are you’re not going to say anything,” said Chris LaCivita, the strategist behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004. LaCivita has been working for a new conservative third-party group this year, the American Issues Project.

I don't think Ronald Reagan could win this election if he'd built his career with the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Rezko and Ayers as his major allies. So why Barack? American Issues Project, known as AIP...

...was eyed by some in the GOP as a potential major player in taking on Obama. It spent nearly $3 million in key states in August on a tough ad tying the Illinois senator to '60s-era domestic terrorist William Ayers and promised additional spots in the fall campaign.

That never happened.

It turns out that the financial crisis was more than just bad politics for McCain.

“Donors just weren’t willing to give the money,” explains LaCivita. “They were hurt badly in the market crash and they were always concerned about how McCain would react.”

The timing of the financial crisis couldn’t have been worse for Republicans. When Lehman Brothers went under on Sept. 15, McCain was tied or in the margin of error in national polls. But when his poll numbers fell along with the stock market, wealthy conservatives saw little reason to invest their shrunken holdings on what was far from a sure thing.

But, surely, some of it must have been personal. There should have been a Swift Boat style campaign going on over the summer, long before the mess on Wall Street materialized.

And it wasn’t just the economic bad news — McCain did little to help his own cause... And donors were always fearful they would be rebuked by their party’s notoriously unpredictable nominee if they underwrote a major effort.

“McCain never gave a real wink and said, ‘Go ahead, boys,’” explained one operative close to a third-party group this year.

Another GOP strategist lamented that McCain lacked a core group of rich friends who were willing to part with their money. Harold Simmons, a Dallas billionaire, underwrote the entire cost of the initial Ayers ad for AIP — but his investment wasn’t matched by other wealthy Republicans.

It's tragic to think that we'll get to election day without voters having been presented with a cohesive image of Barack's radical roots. While liberals think that Ayers and Wright have had their story told, that's just silly. Most Americans, while they may have heard the names, don't get the big picture, and don't realize the degree to which they've been lied to by Barack.

“Time is drying up but not gone,” said Evan Tracey, who heads the ad-monitoring Campaign Media Analysis Group. “For ads to work, they need repetition, so if anyone is going to get involved, they either need a very strong (and unique) message or some kind of national footprint to have any impact.”

By law, campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with outside entities. But McCain aides don’t seem hopeful that help is on the way or interested in sending any signals.

“I have no idea what’s going on with third-party groups,” is all Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, would say this week.