New York Magazine via Josh Marshall:
The alternative, of course, is to get on offense, to batter McCain for his gaffes and incoherence, hammer him for his flip-flops, highlight how his maverick status is a thing of the past, and turn him into a combination of Bush and Grandpa Simpson. God knows there are those in Chicago champing at the bit to do just that—not least, one imagines, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, who can wield the cudgel of negative ads with as much vigor and glee as any Republican. Yet Obama seems reluctant to go there. Tough pol though he is, he’s a conciliator and not a confrontationalist at heart; he seems to believe that once undecided voters know him better, he will have them eating, along with so many others, out of the palm of his hand.
If only we could vote on whether Obama will follow Axelrod to victory.
There is no taking the high road with the ad hoc coalition that has been ruling this country for the last 12 or so years. They’ve blocked that road with kills and blown up all the bridges. They operate in the gutter and that’s where the light of principled political discourse needs to be pointed.
America deserves a healthy conservative movement, not the animate corpse that is the GOP machine.