Records not rhetoric

Jennifer Rubin jumps of the Rick Lowry column I noted below to make the argument that a politician’s record should trump their rhetoric:

The surest clue to a politician’s intentions is his record, not his campaign rhetoric. Obama’s is fairly clear. Up through 2002 he sat on the Woods Fund and gave out money to a hodgepodge of left-leaning groups including ACORN and the Arab American Action Network. As a state senator he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and favored strict gun control. As a U.S. Senator he was rated the most liberal (with some pretty liberal competition) — voting to cut off funding for troops and against both Justices Roberts and Alito and supporting the Democratic party line on everything from taxes to offshore drilling. He has been exquisitely sensitive to Big Labor’s agenda (e.g. opposing the Colombia Free Trade agreement, helping to sink immigration reform, and favoring the Orwellian-sounding Employee Free Choice Act).

In short, this is a very, very liberal fellow. Maybe with a Democratic Congress he’ll practice superhuman restraint. Maybe the economic crisis leaves him little chance to enact taxes and a raft of new programs. Maybe a savvy Secretary of State will sit him down and explain that he’s just not going to woo rogue state dictators. (Who will that be — Madeline Albright? Tony Lake? The mind reels.) But perhaps he’ll do what he has done his entire political career: pursue an immoderate and ultra-liberal agenda. It seems obvious that’s what he’d prefer to do.

The question is how you cut through the noice and chaos of an election and the headlines of the financial crisis to make the broader point that Obama is too liberal for the country?

Voters don’t seem as open to this line of argument as they were in the past.  I think you have to tie the liberalism into the inexperience to make a argument that Obama is not prepared to lead.  It can’t just be “liberal, libeal, liberal.”  It has to be his policies will hurt not help; that he has not learned the lessons of the past.

A number of pundits have argued that McCain should run against an unpopular Congress; argue for divded government in essence.  I think this is a good idea given the unpopularity of both Bush and Congress and the general centrist inclinations of the country, but it is easier said then done.  Can voters be made to understand the danger of a united leftist government?  We shall see.

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