As every good conservative knows, no matter what happens in a campaign, no matter the content of advertising or what any Republican may say, liberals (and their friends in the media) will always, always, always accuse the GOP candidate in question of "mud-slinging", negative campaigning, etc., etc... Whether there's ever any truth to the charge matters not. It's accepted dogma in the media, so they don't question it.

In other words, we just come to expect it. Our guy can put out a substantive ad that draws a comparison between how he may have voted on some issue vs. the competition, and it's portrayed as "going negative". One really wonders just what can be said without being subject to the charge. But that's really the point...the answer is, if you're a Republican, "nothing".

Even with this being the case, you have to be a little amused by the latest charge that one of McCain's latest ads, "The One", which poked fun at the "cult of Obama" we've all been watching for the past year, is in fact a coded message to Evangelicals to make them think Obama is the anti-Christ. I kid you not.

From an article in today's Wall Street Journal by Steven Waldman:

Much attention has been given to John McCain's "celebrity" ad showing Barack Obama alongside paragons of ditziness Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But some are arguing that it's a second ad that will go down in the record books as an all time low in part because it stokes fears that Sen. Obama is, literally, the antichrist.

Called "The One," the Web ad implies that Sen. Obama has a Messiah complex. It begins with an announcer intoning, "And: It should be known that in 2008 the world will be blessed. They will call him: The One." ...

...liberal religious leaders see something ominous. The ads "seem to target Evangelical Christians in profoundly disturbing ways, using language and imagery that would have a special effect on Evangelicals€¦ inspiring anxiety of the most primal spiritual form: fear of the Anti-christ," wrote Brian McLaren, a leading progressive evangelical. ...

"Progressive evangelical"?? Whatever. It goes on...

Suggesting that a candidate thinks he's God is a rather strong charge but some religious leaders argue that the McCain ad went even farther. The Eleison Group, a Democratic consultant operation specializing in reaching religious voters, published a detailed memo attempting show how the McCain ad uses language and imagery that seems suspiciously similar to that from the Left Behind series, which has sold 70 million copies.

Their evidence:
€¢ The Ad refers to Obama as The One. Left Behind refers to the false religion set up by antichrist Nicholas Carpathia as The One World Religion.
€¢ The ad quotes Obama as saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired€¦we are the ones that we've been waiting for." In the Left Behind Series, the slogan of the One World Religion is, "We are God."
€¢ The ad features a stairway to heaven, and an image of a sun-drenched cloudscape that looks a bit like the covers of two recent Left Behind books.

Liberal Christian scholar Randall Ballmer concludes: "There's there is no doubt that the ad plays effectively on evangelical fears of the Antichrist and a one-world government.'"

Oh. My. Goodness. These people are actually serious.

More of this piffle over at Time, where liberal Tony Campolo weighs in:

A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative Evangelicals are the least enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does have two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote. That's what worries Campolo, who also sits on the Democratic Party's platform committee. "Those books have created a subliminal language, and I think judgments will be made unconsciously about Barack Obama," he says. "It scares the daylights out of me."

In other words, the groundwork for "why" Obama lost - if he loses - is being laid. It won't be because the country rejected him, his ideas, liberalism, etc.. It will be becasue those wascally Republicans covinced Christians that he's in league with the Devil.

OK, speaking as a member of the supposed targeted evangelical audience, let me say that I don't need any such fears to "be afraid" of this guy. All I need to know is that he is the single most radical liberal to ever be nominated by a major American political party. And, by looking at what little record he has and paying attention to his rhetoric, I know he would be instrumental in taking this country and its culture even farther away from its founding traditions and towards a more omnipotent federal government and a politically correct liberal Nirvana.

And you don't need to be the anti-Christ to do that.

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