McCAIN FOLLOWS ROVE

His ad attacking the lipstick remark is simply preposterous as many have noted, including America's most influential blogger, Andrew Sullivan:

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil.

Just in case you missed the import of these words, Sullivan ends his post unambiguously:

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.

This move by McCain is so bad that even some Cornerites object to it:

Not So Swift [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

...But the Republicans are coming across as whiny grievance-mongers. Don't they realize that this harping on ambiguous slights is what people hate about political correctness? It was bad enough when liberals were trying to destroy Palin. Now Republicans are trashing her brand. They're undermining the basis of her appeal as a different, tougher kind of female politician. Today has been worse than wasted.

re: Not So Swift [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
They don't get it.
... For a conservative to start crying sexism was ridiculous. Please don't follow that lead, McCain-Palin 2008. I'm heartened, as I noted in my piece today, that Palin hasn't taken up the sexism whine herself. Based on her past comments, I don't imagine she will. And I'd like to believe she cringed, too, when she watched the "lipstick" ad.