Wednesday, June 13, 2007

McCain v. Romney   [Rich Lowry]

Another sign of McCain's extraordinary descent so far in this race is that he has been reduced to frontally attacking Romney in June! Of course, as a friend points out, if Romney is going to (successfully, so far) define himself on TV, someone has to push back. But the dynamic of negative campaigning in a multi-candidate field is that it usually hurts the attacker as much as the attackee. Check out the College Republican-style, but amusing, fake Romney logo produced by the McCain camp by the way, which Jonathan Martin has here. I guess the McCain camp wants to tear down Romney, then will turn to tearing down Thompson, and hopes eventually to set up a McCain-Giuliani match. (Geraghty has some interesting two-man race musings here.) I have absolutely nothing against negative campaigning and this race will have its ups and downs, so maybe McCain will look better again at some point, but this certainly isn't where he expected to be even a few months ago.

UPDATE: I've been upbraided for not engaging on the substance of the McCain slap at Romney. Jake Tapper goes into here.

06/13 03:14 PMShare