As Allah points out, control of the Senate may well hinge on George Allen’s fate in Virginia. Thus, it is time to rally around the flag (as it were).
Good news came yesterday from a SUSA poll which showed Allen boasting a heady five point lead over Webb. Given that Webb trailed by only three points in the last poll taken, this is a pretty remarkable result.
Think of what the Allen campaign has given Virginia voters the last month. First, it decided the best way to defuse macaca-gate was to insist Allen had just made up a silly sounding word. Next, Allen appeared on a nationally televised debate with Webb and seemed to go out of his way to appear like a parody of a slippery politician, refusing to answer such straight-forward questions like whether he supported the Bush position on “torture” or would instead opt to join John McCain in the Anti-Belly Slap Caucus. Allen also refused to answer whether he would commit to serving his full six years as Virginia’s senator.
The next day, opportunity knocked for Allen when TV reporter Peggy Fox decided to play Grand Inquisitor at another Webb-Allen debate and asked whether he had any vile Jew-blood frolicking in his gene pool. Allen’s righteous indignation over this incident quickly yielded to crass stupidity when, to assure Virginia voters of his not-Jewish bona fides, he professed his love for a well prepared pork chop.
As if that weren’t enough, this week dubious allegations arose that Allen had used a very bad word back when David Crosby was thin. There was also something about him shoving a moose’s head into a mailbox or something like that.
I’m only pointing out what a bad month it’s been for Allen. Speaking objectively, his handlers probably had something very different in mind 28 days ago. And yet he’s extended his lead during this painful month. So if he stretches out his lead during one of the most disastrous stretches in recent political history, is there any chance he can lose?
NO, NOT REALLY. And for that Allen can thank Jim Webb and his handlers.
I’m normally an advocate of no-holds-barred politics. Negative advertising works. Defining your opponent is desirable. But the Webb campaign clearly was an exception to the rule.
Webb has probably the most admirable biography of any active politician. Meanwhile, his opponent was self-destructing. The obvious tack for Webb was to play up his role as an outsider and keep himself above the fray. He should have pounced on Peggy Fox’s question as inappropriate. Later, he should have offered some blather about how the election should be about issues that matter to the great people of Virginia rather than what his opponent said thirty years ago. Meanwhile, he could have just stood back while Allen continued his bizarre campaign of self-destruction.
Virginians would have thought Webb was too good for politics, and he would have harvested a big win on Election Day. Instead, Webb has proven just the opposite – he’s not good enough for politics. I never thought I’d write this, but given the hateful and malicious campaign James Webb has allowed to be waged in his name, he has diminished American politics.
THE FACT THAT WEBB IS LOSING is surely a hefty load of shinola for the angry left that has rallied to his cause. And with so much shinola, there has to be a pony in there somewhere for them, right?
The reason Webb is losing, and Paul Hackett lost and the left has generally been thumped the past six years, is that anger and rage aren’t attractive qualities. Yet this is all the angry left brings to the party. For them it’s all bile all the time, and to most voters this makes for a fairly repulsive spectacle.
When Jim Webb’s surrogates began poking around the background of George Allen’s 80-something mother, it was ugly. When they launched pathetic attacks about the kind of cretin George Allen allegedly was in college, they looked mean-spirited, destructive and ridiculous.
If the left were to take a hard look at itself, it would realize that Allen’s lead hasn’t stretched out because of anything Allen has done. Allen and his campaign have performed wretchedly. But Webb, thanks to the angry left tactics that he has unconscionably chosen to employ, has done even worse.
The angry left could learn from this. It won’t. I’d even wager that when the Election Day returns come pouring in and November 7 shapes up as yet another disappointment for them, they’ll chalk up this latest defeat to the fact that they’re just too nice to compete against those nasty Republicans.
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