Republican operatives are freaking out -- and the only "hope" is to put a lot of money into an attack on Obama. It'll be vintage Karl Rove: lies, smears, fear-mongering. That's all the Republicans have to offer America in 2008.
Tom Edsall at Huffington Post has been talking to GOP operatives -- and they're petty open about the need for negativity:
In not-for-attribution interviews, a number of Republicans were neither optimistic about his chances nor positive in their assessment of his campaign so far.McCain already showed he couldn't control -- or didn't want to control -- the GOP state party leaders in North Carolina and Tennessee when they started racist attacks on Obama. McCain won't stand in the way of the attacks on Obama.
"I think we've got a world of problems," said one Republican strategist with extensive experience in presidential campaigns. He said this came home to him with a thud when he watched Obama and McCain give speeches last Tuesday, with the Democrat speaking before "20,000 screaming fans, while John McCain looked every bit of his 72 years" in a speech televised from New Orleans. This Republican cited the liberal blogger Atrios' description of McCain's speech with a green backdrop that made McCain "look like the cottage cheese in a lime Jell-O salad."
For McCain to stand a chance of winning, the operative contended, the campaign, the Republican National Committee, or an independent group will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama's credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity, the operative pointed out, which, he argued, may kill McCain's chances.
