That he quit the Iraq Study Group to earn $1.9 million in speeches while running on a platform of 'national security' shows that he's a greedy immoral egomaniac who thinks he will not be caught or held accountable for his immensely selfish character. The ad run by Moveon is also a good case study in a functional progressive apparatus.
The anecdote has been floating around the internet since June, when it was first reported in Newsday. It was dramatically amplified by the blogs, seen by millions of influential activists, and from there was pushed into the cable news circuit, albeit briefly. This has given Moveon the confidence to launch this ad in Iowa, and it will soon move into the Democratic party mainstream attack talking points. Should Giuliani become the Republican nominee, he will be tagged with this monstrously greedy and petty episode the whole campaign, and any missteps he makes by denying or changing his story will only hurt him more.
Had Moveon done this in 2000 or even 2004, it's likely that cable news talking heads and their right-wing bosses would have immediately flicked the criticism aside with something akin to Rathergate. They would have made the story about Moveon's donors, or Dean, or Democrats in disarray. That isn't happening with Petraeus, and it's not happening with Giuliani.
In addition, the right-wing machine, which has typically done this stuff to us, isn't working as well anymore. They can't puncture the Hsu story into the American consciousness, no matter how often it's reported. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are now correctly seen as partisan outfits, and I got an email from a Democratic staffer the other day actually laughing at the notion that anyone takes right-wing blogs seriously. Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a 'fag' generated serious pushback. That is not remotely how the media environment operated in 2000 or 2004, when it was commonly accepted conventional wisdom that the media was liberal and Moveon and bloggers were crazy. And that's not even getting into how the structure of media has changed, where 19 year old gay videobloggers on Youtube hysterically crying about Britney Spears can reach millions of people and hit back at Fox News with more credibility than the channel itself has.
To contrast, the Swift Boat stuff was floating around the internet for months before it hit cable TV, and so were the attacks on Gore for the recount. Sifting the talking points, arguing them out, and getting the narrative straight is absolutely essential for running effective messaging. That's why Swift Boat worked, as did Sore/Loserman. It was tested on the internet first. And that's how the Giuliani story happened; this has been bubbling for months, and now it's tagging Giuliani. It's one of the first direct vicious attacks against a GOP frontrunner that connected, though it had clear antecedents in the Macaca incident.
Finally, the GOP Presidential candidates feel the sting of accountability. It doesn't feel so good, does it, boys?
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