Political Comment

I suppose it was just a matter of time that the Republican candidate for president would call the Democrat a socialist. According to news reports this morning, that's what McCain is doing in battleground states like North Carolina and Virginia (you can see the article at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-McCain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin). The irony is that he makes the claim based on Obama's plan to offer 95% of Americans a tax cut, and not based on any sort of government takeover of the economy (oh wait-- that's now a Republican thing after the Bush administration's response to the AIG near-collapse). I guess it's a common strategy to re-define terms in the middle of a campaign, especially one that appears to be tanking. But the history of red-baiting in this country is mostly a shameful one, and its current use says more about McCain's desperation than anything substantial about Obama's plan.