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Ross Douthat: "Like Poulos, I don't quite get that 'begin' - I think the McCain campaign has been trying to redefine Obama's identity more or less all year; they've just been playing the 'vacuous celebrity' and 'tax-and-spend liberal' cards, and only now are turning over the 'pals around with radicals' card because the others haven't worked. More generally, while I take the point about the potency of the Jeremiah Wright connection, my read on the situation is the opposite of Cost's: If there wasn't a single overriding issue like the economy on voters' minds, and if the two candidates were coming into the final month evenly matched - to the point where gaining a point or two with low-information voters or boosting your base's turnout by a point or two could make all the difference - then I think the gloves-off approach would have a chance of working. (Before the financial crisis hit, I confidently expected Wright to reappear down the stretch somehow, as a potential trump card for McCain in states where the polls were running very close.) But now, in these circumstances ... well, I think a rash of off-topic negative campaigning just makes the election look once and for all like 'change versus change the subject,' as Rich Lowry puts it today."
David Frum: "My pals over at the Corner are very excited by the last-minute attempt to transform Bill Ayers into the Willie Horton of 2008. Well, good luck...."
Related, my colleague Jeet Heer writes, "Because National Review is going on and on about terrorism, this might be a good occasion to revisit that magazine’s own relationship with political violence. I’ve written on this subject before but the current situation makes it interesting to recall these facts. ..."