One of the more compelling aspects of the 2008 campaign has been the Republican Party’s up-front assertion that issues don’t (or shouldn’t) matter.<\/p>\n
“This election is not about issues,” declared McCain campaign chairman Rick Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”<\/p>\n
This theme resurfaced again today as Republicans struggled to push the economic crisis aside as a campaign issue.<\/p>\n
Here’s a telling passage from a Politico.com report today.<\/p>\n
“We need to get it back to the middle pages of the Wall Street Journal instead of on the front page of every paper every day,” Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, a host here, said of the economic crisis.<\/p>\n
This view of politics — call it Rovian civics — has done wonders for the GOP. Personalities and images are powerful things.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the campaign, voters seemed to identify more with McCain even when they agreed with Obama on things like the war, healthcare, and the economy.<\/p>\n
Broad ideological themes, small-government, tax cuts, family values, etc., seemed to trump the devil-in-the-details elements of policy.<\/p>\n
But could it be that the GOP has reached the point where they’ll have to wade back into thorny debates over governance?<\/p>\n
The voters seem to be saying Yes.<\/p>\n
Republicans face the likelihood of a serious drubbing in November, in congressional and gubernatorial races, if not in the presidential contest. <\/p>\n
It’s likely that the McCain camp will give the Rove Method one last try, launching a fresh round of personal attack ads in the final weeks.<\/p>\n
If that fails, the GOP will have to craft a new political agenda that wins voter-approval on its merits. That process will be painful — but not as painful as losing elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the more compelling aspects of the 2008 campaign has been the Republican Party’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}