And The Sun, Being Fusion Powered, Is Hot

In other pieces of complete obviousness, Steve Benen comes up with the fact that the GOP hasn't run on issues since Nixon and isn't about to start now.

We didn't hear too much of this from McCain last night in his acceptance speech, which at least tried to strike an above-the-fray tone, but his convention and his campaign has been less than subtle. When talking about McCain, Americans hear amorphous soundbites about patriotism and service. When attacking Obama, we hear character attacks about celebrity, elitism, and presumptuousness.

Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, summarized the Republicans' perspective perfectly a couple of days ago: "This election is not about issues." Indeed, it can't be -- McCain is on the wrong side of practically every policy dispute Americans care about.

There are two angles to keep in mind. First, if voters are genuinely desperate for change, playing on their cultural insecurities won't be enough. These guys tried this approach in '92, for example, and came up short. This year, with three-in-four Americans convinced the nation is badly off track, only so many people can be swayed by talk of Paris Hilton, arugula, and Obama being "uppity."

And second, let's also note how entirely unoriginal all of this is. Atwater did it, Rove did it, and now Schmidt is doing. Without these cultural insecurities, Republicans would lose every election.

The LA Times report added that GOP strategists are convinced, probably with good reason, that there are voters "who may be struggling economically, detest President Bush and oppose the Iraq war -- but still may vote based on a visceral sense of which candidate respects their way of life."

With that in mind, watch how both campaigns spend the next 60 days, not arguing over who's right on the issues, but over whether issues matter at all.

I'll go even further. The GOP makes up crazy social conservative bullshit and declares it to not only be the actual issues that supercede the real concerns voters have, but they frame it in such a way that the Democrats are the cause of the problems. It's not "the economy is bad" that's the issue, it's "Democrats spending government money on worthless programs that is causing the economy to be bad" that is the issue, despite Republicans having been in charge and spending trillions to increase the size of government. Anything a Republican does is inherently good, anything a Democrat does is inherently bad, even if they do the same thing. Everything is spun from their own narrow viewpoint, and then that narrow viewpoint is then foisted upon the public through the media.

If you can't win on the issues, change the issues.