How Wingnut Jujitsu Works

Since it's increasingly looking like John McCain's campaigning next week will be built around the notion that he is being "attacked" by the race-card-wielding Obama, I didn't want this line from NIXONLAND, on The Master's first congressional campaign in 1946, which I posted about in greater detail yesterday, to get lost in the shuffle. It's basic to what's going on:

You [don't] have to attack to attack. Better, much better, to give something to the mark: make him feel like he has one up on you. Let him pounce on your "mistake." That makes him look unduly aggressive. Then you sprung the trap, garnering the pity by making the enemy look like a self-righteous and hyper-intellectual enemy of common sense. You attacked jujitsu-style, positioning yourself as the attacked, inspiring a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounded resentments grow alongside your performance of being wounded. Your enemies appear only to have died of their own hand. Which makes you stronger.

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