My brother, who runs a small construction company in Putnam Valley, New York, just called with his thoughts on the Palin nomination.
“It might not be that stupid after all,” he told me. “She hunts, she fishes, she has a pregnant 17-year-old daughter, her husband has a DUI and her brother in law tasered his 11-year-old kid … So she’s got the redneck vote. And there are a lot of them.”
That, of course, is what McCain was thinking — solidify the base, and try to attract working-class people in heartland and southern states who have been badly hurt by Bush but might have trouble relating to a Harvard-educated African American.
There’s really no secret about the strategy here: The GOP has used race-based and culture-based fearmongering for years.