In part to insulate himself politically from what he saw as inevitable right-wing attacks, Barack Obama has been asking Democratic donors to avoid sending their checks to so-called 527 groups, the unregulated advocacy organizations notorious for damaging John Kerry's presidential campaign four years ago. The argument followed that when a fringe organization criticized Obama, the campaign itself could respond directly, allowing the Illinois senator to frame his rebuttal as he saw fit.
But will the conservative attacks ever come? McClatchy says efforts to erect this year's GOP smear machine have been slow:
[T]here's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent $22 million attacking Democrat John Kerry. Prominent groups and donors that played key roles in independent conservative 527 groups four years ago say they're sitting out this election. And while they've raised more than they did at this point four years ago, the independent pro-Republican groups still lag more than $50 million behind pro-Democratic groups.
This piece follows up on the reporting of Politico's Jonathan Martin, who talked to more than a dozen GOP strategists and found "no serious anti-Obama 527s in existence nor are there any immediate plans to create such a group."
Why the dearth of right-wing attack dogs? McClatchy says contributors are nervous about increased federal regulations and the political stigma that now surrounds such endeavors. Martin adds that donors fear they could be labeled racist for attacking a black presidential candidate and notes that McCain himself has joined his rival in disavowing the campaign tactics of many 527s.
But both articles suggest one crucial reason behind the absence of right-wing 527s that speaks volumes: Republicans just can't get all that fired up about McCain.
This isn't a new insight; McCain was never favored among rank-and-file conservatives in the primary and right-wing gasbags have railed against his purported "moderate stances" on things like the environment and immigration reform repeatedly. But it's an insight often overlooked in all the attention on the "divided," post-primary Democratic Party.
We earlier detailed how women were coming back into the Democratic fold following Hillary Clinton's departure from the race. More recently, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver crunched some numbers and suggested that while there are a contingent of Democrats that really dislike Obama, McCain's problem is broader and more complicated:
But look, by contrast, at the enthusiasm gap between the two candidates. 56 percent of Democrats have a very favorable view of Barack Obama, while just 34 percent of Republicans have a very favorable view of John McCain. The thing that's a little bit scary for McCain is that this is after a likely voter screen has been applied, and so even after you get done filtering out those Republicans around the margins who weren't planning to vote in the first place, many of the remaining ones are still doing so for McCain somewhat grudgingly. [...]
But if the election doesn't look like it's going to be close, there could be a snowball effect in which Republican turnout is quite low. If that is the case, the map could turn out to be very, very blue, and Republicans might lose a couple more Senate seats than are generally thought to be in play -- somewhere like Idaho, for instance, could be interesting -- and perhaps an extra dozen or half-dozen House seats on top of that.
Sacrifice your maverick image to woo the base or risk losing that grassroots support to peel off moderates? It's a quandary McCain has yet to figure out. Until he does, those 527s may not commit to his campaign.
UPDATE: Of course, there's another possible reason for the dearth of right-wing 527s. As Kevin Drum puts it, "maybe conservatives don't need to spend millions of dollars on Swift Boat-style attacks because fringe lunatics are doing all the same work for free."
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