Operation Link Obama and Ayers Day 3

If McCain really does have a master plan of making Obama's connection to Bill Ayers a part of the news cycle, then so far it has been implemented beautifully. Yesterday, we saw the story reach into new sub sets of the media that are crucial in order to make this a front burner issue. The most significant was that it wound up on the view.



The reason this is significant is not because McCain likely got many converts but because this moves the story into yet another sub set of the media, the morning talk show. The media today is so fragmented that in order to drive a story so that it is a part of the news cycle you really need to have it travel through each sub set. Now, it has moved from the print MSM, to the new media, to television, and now to the morning talk shows. Remember, the media doesn't move the story by what they say but rather what they cover. If a truly independent and undecided woman was watching The View, her mind was likely not moved by Liz Hasselback's argument or Whoopi Goldberg's argument. Rather, her curiousity was piqued because the topic was discussed. Now that it is out there, that woman will want to know more and our society will give her plenty of avenues to learn more.

The story continues to enjoy a great deal of success on the conservative blogs, however it has also reached out to cable news beyond Fox News. This CNN piece shows just how potentially devastating this story could be to Obama.


Since we are into day three, it is clear that McCain was effective in putting this story into the middle of the news cycle. That said, the debate is on tonight and of course, I still firmly continue to believe that it will be difficult to move the economy out of the picture.

As such, I think it is time to look at how McCain turn the media firestorm over the Obam/Ayers connection into an effective campaign strategy. First, it is not enough to throw a bunch of mud at this connection. That will only look like a smear and furthermore, up against the economic crisis, it is nothing. Second, it is not enough to roll out each and every wily character Obama has come into contact with. The way to do this is to build a narrative that ties Obama to radical characters, radical policies, and then effectively shows how those same radical economic policies will cause chaos if he is President.

Fortunately, McCain not only has time but all the ammunition necessary to do all of this. First, McCain will have a very tight rope in this debate. If he mentions Ayers too much it looks like he is desperately smearing. If he doesn't mention him at all, it will effectively move the story from the news cycle. As such, he must mention him but not too much.

By the end of the week, I would pivot away from Bill Ayers and have Palin begin to mention Obama's connection to Tony Rezko on the stump. This is especially timely since Rezko appears to be cooperating with the Feds. Rezko ties in nicely into a narrative that McCain will need to build that Barack Obama is 1) part of the D.C. politics as usual, and 2)part of the mortgage problem. That, I will talk about later. If I am the McCain campaign, I would leak again to the Washington Post or another paper of that sort, that I am planning on pivoting. While this appeared to be a foolish strategy, by telegraphing their move, the MSM tried to cut them off by running stories in advance down playing the connection. All this really did is expand the media coverage of the Ayers' story. Why reinvent the wheel? It worked once so keep it up.

I wouldn't spend more than five days trying to drive the media to talking about Rezko, when I would pivot again and simply tie Obama to the entire corrupt political establishment of Chicago, Cook County, and Springfield. Here, Sarah Palin would again be an effective attack dog. She could say something like this on the stump.

In Alaska, I fought the corrupt political establishment. You know, I thought there was no more corrupt political establishment in the country than Alaska. I was wrong. It turns out that in Chicago, Cook County and Springfield, the political home of Barack Obama, the corruption dwarfs even my own home state. Of course, unlike myself, who fought against that corruption, Barack Obama only embraced it. He calls Emil Jones his political god father. Jones is retiring this year and he is handing his seat to his son. Jones has been the only defender of Governor Rod Blagojevich in the entire Illinois political system. In 2006, Barack Obama endorsed Todd Stroger for Cook County Board President. Since then, Stroger has raised Cook County Sales taxes to the highest levels in the country while dozens of his friends receive six figure patronage jobs. This is the sort of enviroment that Barack Obama cut his political teeth in, only unlike me, he didn't battle against the corruption but embraced it.

Then, they ought to link Obama to the overall corrupt climate of Chicago and Illinois in general for about a week. He has to link Obama to all the corrupt practices patronage jobs, pay to play (which he essentially did wiht this scheme with Tony Rezko) Finally, bring up Obama's long term connection to ACORN and do this for about another week. He needs to tie Obama to their intimidation tactics, socialist ideals, and of course voter fraud.

If this is all done effectively, what McCain has done is laid the groundwork to tie Barack Obama to radicalism and corruption. This allows McCain to argue that Barack Obama comes from a culture that believes those that can't get for themselves should be given by the government. Furthermore, it is a culture that puts the powerful far too close to the politicians. The problem with D.C. is that the powerful are far too close to the politicians. While Barack Obama claims that he will clean this up, his history is the exact opposite. That's where McCain needs to pound his shady land deal, his sweetheart mortgage, and the massive contributions that Fannie/Freddie have given Obama.

This becomes a three pronged strategy. First, you muddy up Obama's character by throwing the kitchen sink of shady connections out. With eachportion of the narrative, McCain needs to have the media do enough to pique the public's interest but not so much that it gets saturated. The public isn't going to be swayed by anyone connection no matter how bad it is, but rather, they need to be swayed because there is a pattern of connections. Then, you show that those shady connections have created a sphere of radicalism and corruption. That radicalism and corruption leads to massive spending, bloated government, and not enough oversight of the powerful. Massive spending will lead to hyper inflation given the bailout in place. If we don't have a President that is willing to oversee the powerful, then we continue the same culture we have always had. There it is. It's easy on paper but it will be very hard to pull off. Watch to see how effectively McCain is able to do it.