EARLY CHARACTER ASSASSINATION IS LIKE YEAST

An interesting point is being made over at Whiskey Fire:

This Rev Wright shit --

Does anyone really believe the GOP wanted to throw this bullshit against the wall in late fucking April?

...Look, it's a pretty good punch. But. There's no reason to throw a punch like that this early in the game... unless that's all you got.

And that's all they got....

Well, this isn't just coming from the GOP, or even the GOP plus media outlets transmitting GOP spin points. But I understand the basic argument: Why would the Republicans want to hit it this hard this early?

The answer is: Early deployment of trivia and character assassination worked four years ago.

The first press conference of the Swift Boat liars was in the first week in May. "News" articles about head liar John O'Neill began appearing in the right-wing press shortly before that. (Although I should note that the Swift Boat liars didn't run their first ad or publish their book until August.)

And what about "flip-flop"? That line of attack actually started in March:

One morning in mid-March, ... the Democratic candidate arrived in West Virginia to speak to an audience of veterans--only to find a new Bush ad airing in the state, criticizing Kerry for voting against the bill last year that provided $87 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq.... When reporters asked about the ad, Kerry coughed up a line that's haunted him ever since: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Within a few hours, McKinnon and his team had incorporated Kerry's reply into a new version of the ad, sent a blast e-mail on the subject to 6 million Bush supporters, and done as much as humanly possible to keep the story of Kerry's remark echoing for weeks to come.

The Bushies were capitalizing on a clumsy utterance that reinforced a point Bush had actually made a couple of weeks earlier:

On March 3 in Los Angeles, Bush said, "Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue."

Kerry provided Bush with ammunition two weeks later at a West Virginia town hall, which instantly made its way into a Bush campaign ad, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

The "flip flop'' charge reverberated through the Republican campaign for the next eight months right through Bush's final campaign rally in Texas with Bush saying, "And then he [Kerry] entered the flip-flop hall of fame."

The moral of the story: If you're flailing in the water in the spring, the Republicans don't wait till fall to throw in an anvil.