South Carolina GOP on a McCain “House”

The South Carolina Republican Party pushed back — hard — against the class-warfare attack from Barack Obama and the Democrats over how many houses John McCain and his family own.  This ad uses McCain’s years as a POW to underscore how much he sacrificed for his country, a way of both defending McCain and putting Obama on the defensive (via Palmetto Scoop):

During a combat mission over Vietnam, John McCain was shot down and severely injured. John McCain’s new home for the next five-and-a-half-years would be an enemy prison cell.

This is where John McCain was starved, beaten, tortured, and maimed for life.

So the next time Barack Obama talks about one of John McCain’s homes, remember this one.

Does this respond to the actual thrust of the Democratic argument? The criticism is that John McCain can’t possibly understand the concerns of normal folk, with all of his wealth. That ignores the fact that Barack Obama does pretty well for himself, too, and that their last nominee had also married a wealthy woman and enjoyed the lifestyle that went with the marriage.

This doesn’t exactly address the surface of their argument, but it attacks it in a totally different way. It argues somewhat obliquely that Obama has never had to sacrifice for his country, certainly not in the way McCain did. It points out the easy ride Obama had in progressing through college, law school, and politics.

Both arguments seem pretty silly to me. McCain certainly can point to his war record with pride and as a reason to trust him. On economics, though, he’d be better off pointing out the hysterics in the Democratic Party who scream Depression! while the economy continues to grow.

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