In any conventional election year, this would be the end of the campaign. Period:
John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.
And remember, this is the Wall Street Freaking Journal reporting this, not the Huffington Post.
I think this explains, in a nut, all the tribalistic shrieks and whooping emanating from the McCain and Palin camps today---a desperate attempt to drown out this story before it gains any legs. And, judging by what I've seen (or not seen) at the major dailies' companion websites, it's been largely successful up to now. Unfortunately, there's a nagging little debate happening tomorrow night, and you can be sure Obama will drop this trifle on the audience at the earliest opportune moment. Watching Huggy try to explain his way out of this be should be more than fun.
And the McCain people had better pray without end that nothing, but nothing, physically threatening should happen to Obama between now and election day. Sarah Palin may be too young and stupid to know any better, but McCain has surely got to know that this "alien/other" angle that he and his people are working is the political equivalent of playing with stick matches in an explosives factory. It only takes one misfit with a grudge---an Arthur Bremer or a Sirhan Sirhan---to alter the dynamics of an election campaign, inalterably and tragically, forever. Someone in McCain's inner circle really needs to ask if the candidate himself could live with the knowledge that the next Sirhan had attended one of his, or Palin's, October rallies---or watched clips of one on YouTube---before deciding to pick up a Ruger and change the course of history. I hate to sound so morbid, but this the kind of game the McCain campaign is playing right now. A deadly serious game, and it needs to be denounced in the most unambiguous of moral terms---for the safety of the candidates, and for the very sake of the Republic.
---Vitelius
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