The GOP is flummoxed

* gilliard:

"Ford's family is well, colorful, but there isn't a shred of evidence that he's ever done anything off the straight and narrow. No kids, no arrests, nothing. So Rove's former henchmen brings back Loving v Virginia with a silly ad. Only problem is that Harold Ford, as light as one can be and called black, is not the kind of person who conjures up fear of the jungle unleashed.

Same with Deval Patrick. He looks like your boss, not some Roxbury thug.

What is happening is the fairness factor coming in. Some people could be hurt by such attacks. but Ford? Patrick? It backfires. Because it's so obvious that whatever these men are, sterotypes they are not. These attacks are seen as unfair, because they go against the grain of these men's public lives. You know how badly a race based attack has to fail in Massachusetts to help a black candidate? Or to turn the Tennessee Senate race competative?

The GOP is flummoxed. The old cards are not playing as they once did. A few years ago, Ford would have been done, now people are on his side and calling it openly racist.

You know, you win enough times, you forget to change the playbook. We could be seeing that right now."

* josh:

"This really is pretty unbelievable: NBC won't run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary because, in the words of the NBC's commercial clearance department, "they are disparaging to President Bush."

Networks usually at least go to the length of coming up with a phony 'we don't run ads with a political message' excuse. But I'm not sure I've ever seen one say something like this. I would have thought that with the president's popularity so low some of the network's usual supineness and cowardice would be a little less evident. Would they not run political ads either?"

* tpmm: safavian:18 months in prison.