It's been argued for quite some time that the Rogue Republican strategy is to target an opponents strong points. That's always struck me as a bit illogical. While that may well be the consequence, the purpose is very probably something else.
That something else, I'm now quite sure, is to distract attention from a Republican candidate's weakness by going on the offense and then, by charging that any response is mere retaliation, managing to take the issue itself off the table.
The latest "community organizer" bit would seem to bear my hypothesis out.
As was to be expected, the Obama campaign took exception to the denigration of Obama's stint as a community organizer. Indeed, the campaign sent out an immediate response making the case that organizing our communities is something valuable in which all grassroots Democrats are involved, and proud of it.
Which is fine, but it misses the point of the attack. Community development is an issue on which Republicans have been vulnerable for over twenty years for the simple reason that they have consistently abused the program to promote their electoral aspirations. The last thing that Palin Person wants to talk about is community development dollars, largely because, despite every effort to transform the federal dollars into economic development pork, community needs and desires continue to claim a chunk.
If you want to see where Wasilla, Alaska is on this issue, just Google. And while you're there, do spend just a minute on the Wasilla Library's predicament. Seems like somebody knows there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Of course, if the citizens of Alaska aren't fully aware of the federal contributions to their fair state, it may well be because the dollars are being funnelled through a variety of private eleemosynary entities, like the Community Development, Inc., which is headquartered in Idaho.
Moreover, if citizens are even a bit confused, it may well be because their internet portal for accessing their government is something called USA.gov
While this designation may well explain the chanting at the Republican Convention, the USA.gov site strikes me as a bit peculiar. Not only is the designation trade marked, but the communities it purports to serve:
Citizens
Businesses and Non-Profits
Government Employees
Visitors to the U.S.
would seem to exclude recent immigrants and permanent residents.
It's been rather evident since the mid-eighties that Housing and Urban Development grants, which were supposed to be based on identified and certified community needs, were actually dispensed in a manner that would enhance the reputation of Republican public officials, or the pocketbooks of their supporters in the real estate development and finance communities. Which is largely why, although urban areas were routinely razed and residents displaced, the expected "renewal" was glacially slow to arrive, if ever. Planning, zoning, surveying and legal enterprise, however, generally thrived. As did the conversion of agricultural lands into exurban subdivisions. Whether that's true of Wasilla, I don't know, but they did get some HUD dough.
We are all aware of the large urban centers that were, boarded up and largely vacant, left behind. However, what we have perhaps not noticed, because the original population densities were less, is that the hollowing out of the larger cities has now moved to the heartland to destroy our smaller cities and towns and advantage the erection of strip malls on our agricultural lands. Moreover, while these once cohesive communities, who have lost their bus, rail and, most recently, air connections to the rest of the country, may well imagine that they have been disadvantaged by their "friends" in Washington to benefit the new immigrants that are flooding back in urban areas and, as the population grows back, spurring their revitalization, it's way past time for them to be abused of that mistaken notion. The decimation of our heartland communities has been orchestrated by land speculators and financiers who thrive on driving enterprise into bankruptcy, so they can pick up assets on the cheap.
That's clearly not a message that McCain's friends in the development industry, or even international trade, want to be spread. Much better that the Republican base continue to believe that Washington is to blame for sending resources to the urban East and Pacific Coast. There's no advantage to letting "fly-over country" know that there's about as much credibility in the Republican economic program as there is in the perennial promise to "wipe out commies" or get rid of gays by declaring them illegal.
There does seem to be some awareness on the part of Rogue Republicans that there aren't any issues on which they have a credible position. Which, no doubt, accounts for Joseph Lieberman's injunction that we should disregard issues (especially those contained in party platforms) entirely and fix our attention on the (inscrutable) persons that have been offered up to lead the nation into an increasingly belicose future.
It's my understanding that the Palin Person compared herself, the soccer mom, to a pit bull minus the lip-stick last evening. How the lip-stick reference relates to John McCain's former acolyte, Victoria "Torie" Clarke, who wrote a book about putting lip-stick on a pig, I don't know. But my first thought on hearing about the pit-bull analogy was that while pit-bulls probably don't eat their young, they are known to bite the hand that feeds them, as John McCain has been known to do. So, perhaps that's another thing Palin and McCain have in common.