Stickybuffalo.com

this is such a transparent good cop/bad cop ploy. the GOP continues flogging the jeremiah wright meme while straight-shooting john mccain pretends to be above the mudslinging, and subservient political reporters are only too happy to let him have it both ways:

Amid Negative Ads, McCain Claims High Road

“For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor,” an announcer says as the ad opens. That controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, then appears onscreen, saying, “No, no, no. Not God Bless America. God Damn America!” (The ad, which you can watch here, has been called “misleading,” since, according to Obama, he was not sitting in his pew when this particular sermon was delivered.)

Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, who has pledged to run a “respectful campaign,” quickly condemned the ad. He suggested in a letter to the state party chair, which was released to the media, that the spot “degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats.”

it’s win-win-win for republicans. the scurrilous anti-obama message still gets through to the mouthbreathing constituency for whom it was always intended. meanwhile, right-leaning voters with more highminded pretensions — who were never going to go for obama in the first place, but were never completely comfortable with the race-baiting tactics either — swoon over the old-school classiness of john mccain, who scores maverick points for ostensibly bucking his party (wink-wink) once again.

for its part, the republican party is thinking ahead to november and thrilled to have hillary clinton’s help in tarnishing the likely democratic nominee. but if all the poop-flinging should ultimately help clinton get the nod, so much the better — that the republicans would much rather run against hillary than barack is the biggest open secret in politics.

it’s painfully obvious that the national media are too complacent, or too much infatuated with BBQ john, or just too fucking dumb to put it all together. here’s hoping the democratic superdelegates are not.