The Richney Stratagem

How can Richie Richney keep moving farther and farther to the right, and expect to win Independents in a general election?  His favorables are tanking, and as the economy improves, he's losing his central argument.

The answer to the first is that he has to win the nomination to get into the Big Game of the general election.  And like any team getting into such a game, there's always a chance that something unforeseen will happen, and the weaker team will win.  But there's another reason as well.

That reason is Richney's access to money.  It's been estimated that some $18 million has already been spent in the GOPer primaries on negative ads, most of it by Richney.  That of course is more money than most people will see in a lifetime, or in several generations.  And it buys a lot of ads.  But it is insignificant in terms of the amount of wealth that the Richney class has to spend without pain, maybe even without noticing, if he gets into the Big Game. 

They can do it now through a number of ways, most of them involving Superpacs.  Yesterday the Obama campaign announced that it would no longer oppose contributions to Superpacs on its behalf. They see what's coming, and they know they have to be able to play defense.   They see what the Richney strategy is becoming: get into the general election whatever the cost to Richney's public image, and then throw hundreds of millions of dollars into negative ads to demonize Obama, so the only issue will be whether the American people will send Satan back to the White House, or elect the other guy, who they don't know much about but at least he's not Satan.

 Forget the economy, the environment, the non-Richneys, the returning troops, forget everything else except how much hate can be generated against Obama, especially in the last two weeks before the election.  The Richney Stratagem is the best financed hate machine in American history.