In case you somehow missed it, here's what Bill Cunningham, a McCain supporter and talk radio host who warmed up the stage today for the Senator, said about Obama:
"At some point in the near future the media -- the stooges from the New York Times, CBS the Clinton Broadcasting System, NBC the Nobody But Clinton network, the All Bill Clinton channel ABC, and the Clinton News Network -- at some point is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama,"
Much to his credit, here was Sen. McCain's response:
"I want to disassociate myself with any disparaging remarks," he said. Asked if the use of Obama's middle name is proper, McCain said, "No, it is not."
McCain has been widely praised for this, as he should be. Except, as Josh Marshall reminds us here, if this reaction is to mean anything, it is going to have to be repeated hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. And that won't happen. Which, as Josh reminds us, is precisely the point:
Now, a good deal has been made out of John McCain's repudiation of talk radio yakmeister Bill Cunningham, who led off for McCain at one of his rallies with the full run of Obama sludge. But don't be distracted or fooled. This is more like an example of what the digital commerce folks refer to as 'channel conflict'. You've got your multiple distribution channels. You've got the way McCain's selling the product. Broadcast. Broad and thematic about McCain. But you've got a number of other product channels to sell through, most of them a lot grittier, but no less essential for ultimate success.
Both can work simultaneously. In fact, in the kind of campaign McCain's running, they're both essential for success (see the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina). The key is just that the channels don't cross. Because that's when the trouble starts and they can begin to undermine or even short-circuit each other. And that's what threatened to happened here.Don't insult your intelligence or mine by pretending that John McCain's plan for this race doesn't rely on hundreds of Cunninghams -- large and small -- across the country, and the RNC and all the GOP third party groups, to be peddling this stuff nonstop for the next eight months because it's the only way John McCain have a real shot at contesting this race.
If McCain really wants to repudiate this stuff, he can start with the Tennessee Republican party which dished all the slurs and smears about Obama being a Nation of Islam-loving anti-Semite, just today. And once he's done talking to the people who will be running his Tennessee campaign, we'll have a number of others he can talk to, like the head of his Ohio campaign, former Sen. Mike DeWine, who gave that Cunningham guy his marching orders.
Let's just not fool ourselves, not lie to ourselves about what's happening here and who's in charge.
This is how Republican campaigns have worked since the age of Richard Nixon. 7 out of the last 11 elections it has worked for them, so why change? They won't stop until we make them stop. Remember that. Playing nice on the national stage is meaningless if your surrogates are rolling around in all of the local gutters.
UPDATE: As if on cue....
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