Conservatives question McCain's attack strategy

Regardless, this is how we elect our leaders. We let them campaign to earn the vote. And that means, use all legal means to make your case -- whether it be stump speeches, verbal attacks, negative ads, splinter groups, YouTube videos, email campaigns, whatever.

Character assassination

None of this is new to California Senator Diane Feinstein. She was on Face the Nation Sunday and predicted the month of October will be a rough one.

"This is going to be a month, I think, of character assassination," Feinstein said. "And so the Republican position is to try to assassinate Barack Obama's character and try to place him in a position where the trust that he has built dissipates, the credibility that he has dissipates."

Shoe on other foot

Who would disagree that if John McCain was up by 10 points, the same tactics wouldn't be used by Team Obama? Remember it was only a month ago when McCain was leading in the polls and the Obama campaign announced it would be playing hardball -- and for awhile was running more negative ads than McCain.

But times are different now, say some conservatives. They look back at 1992 when the economy took center stage and see some deja vu.

Stop the madness

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, also appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, doesn't believe a negative campaign can be successful.

"They don't understand how the same political tactics that they've used before, going after liberal, liberal, liberal, that's not going to work now because something has overshadowed it," Brooks explained. "And that overshadowing, that economic anxiety is just going to dominate the next five weeks. There's no way around that. And if they're not touching that, then they're not touching the core issue. And John McCain has not done it. And he hasn't done it over the weekend, where they've been attacking Obama for being too liberal or not loving America enough."

The L word

GOP strategist Mike Murphy, appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, shares Brooks' point of view - to a point. He agrees that it is all about the economy and that the character game isn't going to work. But he, unlike Brooks, thinks mentioning the L word and the potential for the L party to dominate the executive and legislative branches of government might equalize the poll numbers.

"Bring up the issue of the concept of a runaway liberal one-party train here in Washington," Murphy told host Tom Brokaw. "You know, just no checks and balances at all. McCain, a partisan, can-do pragmatist vs. the idea that everything in this town being run by the Democrats with no restraint, no balance, no control, and that’ll affect the economy in a bad way. I think that’s a better prosecution for the McCain campaign than these character attacks..."

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