McCain Trys to Change the Subject

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune writes, "If the gates of hell weren't already standing open, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin flung them wide Saturday by declaring at campaign events in Colorado that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and "not a man who sees America like you and I see America."

In saying this, Palin all but confirmed remarks in Saturday's Washington Post attributed to an anonymous "senior Republican operative" that "We're going to get a little tougher. We've got to question [Obama's] associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here."

"The subject" is the frightening economic news, and it's caused GOP presidential nominee John McCain to fall roughly 7 percentage points behind Obama, according to the average results of numerous national opinion polls.

What's the new subject? Palin's reference was to Obama's relationship to former 1960s radical William Ayers, a guilt-by-slight-association charge that, however weak, allows Republicans to question both Obama's patriotism and his claim to a place in the political mainstream. "

Read Zorn's full article here.
From Chris Matthew's Hardball with Peggy Noonan and Eugene Robinson:

MATTHEWS: Okay I am a student of politics, since I was 13-years-old and I see a pattern, alright? This has nothing to do with my views about these candidates. I see an attempt, over the last seven days, to tie three points together in the thinking of older voters, especially, so that they can have a mystery about Barack Obama they hadn't had last week. One, this question of Bill Ayers, the Weathermen, back 10 years or so in Chicago politics or Chicago organizing politics. Two, his middle name Hussein. And three, the question of who his donor list includes? I think they're putting this together by demanding that donor list. They're trying to build the case that he's a man of mystery. That, not that he's a street corner guy from the ghetto but that he's somehow maybe connected to terrorism because of this past association with a terrorist. With his middle name being Hussein, which I predicted last week, everybody it's, everybody I talked to, it was coming out. And third this donor list game. They are trying to make him a man of dangerous mystery because they can't beat him on the standard issues of this election. Is that what they're doing?

EUGENE ROBINSON: Absolutely. I mean it's, it's and they don't have to connect the dot-

MATTHEWS: Connect the dots!

ROBINSON: But they're not connecting the dots.

MATTHEWS: Well you're watching it.

ROBINSON: They just, they just, they just, they just pop a dot up here and another dot out there and they, and they let people draw whatever-

MATTHEWS: They want us to do the dirty work for them.