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Pattrick Ruffini who did such a bang-up job with the Republican online outreach during the 2006 election, has some advice for John McCain: let slip the little yappy-type dogs of war:

Earlier today, Soren Dayton, a friend and frequent collaborator in the blogosphere, was suspended from the McCain campaign for making a note of this video in his Twitter account.

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I'm not going to argue that Soren was right in posting the link. But I do agree with Matt Lewis that there was some overreaction here. If they go further with this civility routine, they risk alienating conservatives in talk radio and the blogosphere who are doing the necessary work of defining Obama and rendering him just as radioactive with the base as Hillary.

A month ago, McCain-Obama looked like a bad matchup for us: a Republican nominee who didn't do much to galvanize the base against a Democrat who didn't either.

The New York Times kerfuffle and now the Wright story is slowly changing that. With an assist from Hillary Clinton's overtures to the right-wing of the Democratic Party, Obama is now a more polarizing figure in key swing states than she is. It is now clear that conservative media will do to Obama what they did to Kerry, Gore, and Clinton. This can be an unalloyed boon to the McCain campaign, as it pretty much takes care of his conservative problem and frees him to go after swing voters.

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In many ways, the Bush campaign had the right approach with the Swift Boat Veterans. Any functionary or board member who had been connected in any way with the Swift Vets resigned from the campaign. The campaign told them -- and, crucially, any 527 -- to take down their ads. They repeated that they respected Kerry's service -- without turning into a mouthpiece for the Kerry Vietnam narrative.

But nothing was done to single out or disrespect John O'Neill and the other veterans who had earned their right to speak. The tone was firm but respectful.

It's nice to see that plausible deniabilty never goes out of style...