Huckleberry Throws Down

by digby

I missed the sabbath gasbag shows, so I didn’t catch this nasty little jibe:

On the June 8 edition of ABC’s This Week, responding to Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) assertion that Sen. John McCain “still has lobbyists running his campaign” and that much of his funding comes from “these special kinds of interests that have fought against real reform in Washington,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said: “John McCain didn’t borrow money from a guy going to jail to build his house, so if we’re going to start talking about associations, that’s fine, we’ll do that.“

McCain’s loyal hound Huckleberry was obviously spouting a soon to be common GOP talking point to rebut the fact that Mr Campaign Finance reform’s campaign is riddled with crooked lobbyists.

I first wrote about this story a year and a half ago, knowing that they would pull the tried and true “where there’s smoke there’s fire” narrative off the shelf, no matter what. It’s a complicated story about a murky political culture that will probably take down the current governor of Illinois and taint a whole bunch of Obama’s associates.

There is no evidence that Obama was involved in anything illegal, but that never matters. It’s about painting this purveyor of a New Politics with a corrupt political machine and ruining his reform message. If the media were hostile to him they would be hitting this much harder already. (I expect we will all have whiplash from their turn around after the right starts hectoring them for being in the tank. The question is when that will happen.)

This stuff is as old as the Republic(as old as politics) so there’s no reason to believe it will ever truly go out of fashion. There will always be character assassination in politics and the modern Republicans have turned it into an art form. The question is if these things are going to have salience in this particular electoral environment and I suspect not as much as usual — at least at first. People have more important things on their minds. But it will take its toll eventually in distraction and energy over time and chip away at his integrity and reputation, which is the least they can hope for.

The beauty of these byzantine financial scandals is that it’s nearly impossible to unpack and people who try to explain them often end up making things worse. (It’s a Democratic weakness that we need to make voters “understand” things like this when they really don’t give a damn about the details.) I say turn it on them and hit back twice as hard at McCain’s crooked lobbyist ties. It’s the one thing that nobody expects of Mr Straight Shooter and I think it’s a real vulnerability after all these years of GOP corruption.

He says he’s running on a three legged platform of reform, prosperity and peace. Since prosperity and peace are completely laughable coming from any Republican at this point, the only he has going for him is “reform.” I think we should kick that leg out from under him.

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