Hillary v3.0

You must give credit where credit is due: Hillary v3.0 came out and did what her masters programmed her to do. Namely, make baseless hit and run attacks against Obama, and then hide behind the concrete walls of the sexism card and the blame the media card. Watching Sarah Palin tonight finally allowed me to figure out the whole of McCain's strategery.

First, they tried to cast her as Hillary v2.0, to try and pull in independent women and Hillary dead-enders. That strategy was quickly abandoned after Palin was booed for trying to conjure up a Hillary glamour. Sarah Palin was then broken down and reconstructed into Hillary v3.0 in order to capitalize on Obama's perceived weakness against a white woman.

McCain can't match rhetoric or wits with Obama, so he needs a surrogate, and who better than Hillary. Unfortunately for McCain, Hillary wouldn't go for it, and neither would the GOP faithful, no matter how much they like to invoke her name these days. So now you may ask, why Hillary?

During the Democratic primaries, Hillary and her supporters released a litany of accusations against Obama, filled with venom and bile. Obama did not return too many of her hits for a variety of reasons, but mostly because he knew what it was: a trap.

Hillary tried, and succeeded at some level, to restart the dreaded Culture Wars. What better way than to show America an angry black man belittling a white woman? Now you may be thinking that America isn't like that anymore, but you would be thinking wrong. America hates angry black men even more than it hates black men. You think I'm wrong? Try comparing Rev Wright's sermons to Hagee's, then, look at the coverage. When you're done with that, compare Wright's sermons to Parsley's, Falwell's, and Pat Robertson's. Better yet, go look at Fred Phelps'. White people treat Farrakhan as if he is Satan himself, but people only complain about Fred Phelps...well, pretty much never, even though I've never seen Farrakhan or Wright protesting at a soldier's funeral. And neither of the two ever had to be bribed to not protest at a funeral for murdered Amish girls. But I digress.

McCain did indeed watch Hillary and learned, but he didn't pay attention to the end of the lecture. Hillary didn't lose because she re-ignited the Culture Wars a little to late. In McCain's view, she lost because she didn't go far enough. So McCain, being an old soldier, decided to do what old soldiers do best: escalate the war.

He sent his Hillary v3.0 onto the field for a test exercise. She hit her targets well. However, it remains to be seen as to how well she'll do in a less controlled situation. She has shown that she can give a good scripted punch, but will she be able to do it off the cuff? More importantly, can she take a hit? I'm sure that over the following days, we'll see the Democrats coming out in force, but I wonder how effective they'll be? I'm not too concerned about Team Obama, as I'm sure that they've already come up with a counter strategy.

It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out over the next few weeks. I eagerly await her first serious interview.