Obama runs against Bush then Palin ignoring McCain at his peril

Dick Morris:

Now that the conventions are over, it is evident that the battle of John McCain is over (McCain won) and the battle of Barack Obama will determine the outcome of the election. Now that McCain has definitively, and I suspect irreversibly, separated himself from George Bush, he has become an acceptable alternative to Obama for voters seeking change. The question now is whether Obama's extra quotient of change -- or the different direction that change will take -- is worth the risk of electing him.

Obama was wrong to invest so much in the Bush-McCain linkage. Any candidate can define himself at his convention. And if McCain chose, as he did, to use the gathering to distance himself from Washington and from the Bush administration, there was really nothing that Obama could do to stop him. He should have focused very specifically on McCain himself and taken shots at specific votes and bills that he introduced. Now, after the massive exposure McCain got at his convention and the demonstrable commitment to change embodied in the selection of Sarah Palin, it is too late.

The Obama campaign doesn't seem to get that it is running against McCain, not Sarah Palin. It spent the entire Republican convention and the week since attacking the vice presidential candidate. That's like stabbing the capillaries not the arteries. Nobody is going to vote for or against McCain because they want Sarah Palin to be vice president of the United States, or don't. But Palin has served, and will serve, a key purpose in illustrating and demonstrating what kind of a man John McCain is. She stands as a tribute to his desire to bring change, his willingness to cut loose from the past and his courage in attempting innovation. No amount of criticism of Palin is going to stop that process. Obama needs to remember who his opponent is.

Now, the election will hinge on a referendum on Obama. Is the extra health care coverage he would pass worth the huge tax increases he will impose? Nobody buys his claim that he will only increase taxes on a few rich people and give the rest of us tax cuts. Voters can add, and they realize that his spending plans and tax cut promises come to a trillion dollars and that his tax increases represent only one-tenth as much. They know that everyone who pays taxes will end up paying more if Obama is elected. The question will be: Is it worth it?

Is his commitment to income redistribution and increasing tax "fairness" worth the risk his tax plans pose for the economy?

Is his plan to pull out of Iraq and his commitment to multilateralism in foreign policy worth the risk of putting someone with virtually no foreign policy experience in charge of our international relations in the middle of a war? Is his promise to respect the Constitution and ratchet back the intrusions of the Bush homeland security measures worth the extra risk of terror attack?

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Obama has always been too close to the nutroots. They are the ones who thought Democrats could win by running against Bush. They never expected the Bush plan in Iraq to actually work, much less as spectacularly as it has. With Iraq being won they have not only lost an issue, they lost the argument about their superior judgment.

This has left their liberalism exposed on the other issues such as taxes and energy. I know they claim health care is an issue, but I don't think it is a problem for a majority of voters. No doubt there are some people who struggle with paying for health care, but frankly I never have and I don't know many who have. It is not because I live in some isolated world. I have always had jobs that provided the insurance as well as the insurance that came from my disability retirement from the Marine Corps.

To me, winning the war is the most important issue. The next most important issue is energy with both national security and economic considerations. The third issue of importance is taxes and the effect on the economy of Democrat tax policy. Democrats and Obama are wrong on all three issues and Republicans and McCain should be hammering them from now until election day.