A chink in the Democrat armor

According to Politico, it seems the White House has realized that their decision on attacking Rush Limbaugh was perhaps counterproductive. Lesson learned - attack the best and you lose ground. While some were undoubtedly hoping that they'd keep up the attack, thereby promoting Rush and building his audience - the audience listening to an alternative message - it could not go on forever. Still, longer would have been more helpful. Yet, having called off the hounds, the Democrats or the White House, have revealed a chink in the Democrat armor that perhaps otherwise would not have come to light.

One of the greatest strengths of the liberal media machine has been to march in lock-step with the same message at the same time. This has allowed them to get a message out clearly and widely very quickly and effectively. Many on the right have lamented the fact that we do not have the same assets at our disposal to accomplish the same thing. But there's a downside to this as well. Every strength can be used as a weakness. Every threat is also an opportunity. And political ju-jitsu has never been more appropriate to use than in situations like this.

The stopping of the attacks on Rush revealed that sometimes that quick-to-market approach leads to bad decisions. Obviously liberal talking points can still be thought out before being disseminated amongst a compliant press and liberal side of the blogosphere, but not always. Not when they need to respond quickly to an event. That talking points machinery has never been stress tested. If there were to be a co-ordinated flood of things they had to respond to, not only would they likely respond in ways that, in hindsight weren't the smartest response, they would also have very divergent and sometimes repugnant responses. Think of all the opportunities it would provide for reasoned responses from the right.

At the very least, it would require that Democrats be more honest in their responses rather than reacting politically expedient and opportunistic way. Democrats during the Blagojevich scandal were fairly quick to respond with disgust much like conservatives, simply because to do otherwise would have appeared partisan, hypocritical, and corrupt. Of course later on they allowed his appointee into the Senate - after they figured the worst of the storm was over.

It seems counter-productive to attack what is perceived as the enemies strength head-on, but their over-confidence in the get-the-word-out machinery showed in the Limbaugh situation and it worked to the advantage of Rush, and ultimately conservatives. It just might be worth the frontal assault.