Perry keeps skidding on smears

Give Rick Perry credit for consistency. His primary mode of political communication remains the smear.  To be more precise, his default mode of attack is the inflammatory insult used to articulate a garden-variety policy disagreement.

Note the structural similarities between two Perry attacks, one made in today's New Hampshire debate
and one made four months ago. Today:

HILLER: Governor Perry, your party’s last nominee, John McCain wrote in the Washington Post in an op-ed about a year ago, his words, “I disagree with many of the president’s policies but I believe he is a patriot, sincerely intent on using his time in office to advance our country’s cause. I reject accusations that his policies and beliefs make him unworthy to lead America, or opposed to its founding ideals.” Agree?

PERRY: I make a very proud statement and, in fact that we have a president that’s a socialist. I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country. So I disagree with that premise that somehow or another that President Obama reflects our founding fathers. He doesn’t. He talks about having a more powerful, more centralized, more consuming and costly federal government.

And on September 15, in a Time Magazine interview:

Go Johnny go...Johnny be good

Bulletin from McCain: Obama will raise taxes and spending:

“We both disagree with President Bush on economic policy,” Mr. McCain said. “The difference is that he thinks taxes have been too low, and I think that spending has been too high.”

“This election comes down to how you want your hard-earned money spent,” Mr. McCain said. Only Republicans, he said, favor policies that can “restore confidence and create economic growth.”

To this line of attack I say, hurray! That's the kind of argument a Republican should make. After eight years of Bushonomics, and several rounds of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy that McCain himself opposed, it's a ridiculously outdated argument. And being a late-stage-decay Republican, McCain has to caricature it by branding Obama a socialist. But even that's an ethical giant step from "Obama, friend of terrorists."