Here is my point exactly...
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Dem Strategists: Sarah Palin Is The New Rush Limbaugh
Is the Rush Limbaugh strategy giving way to the Sarah Palin strategy?
Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking.
James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell.
“Her name conjures up all kinds of reactions in people’s minds,” Carville told me, adding that her association with the campaign will be used to portray the GOP as hidebound and to alienate moderates. “She’s an uncomfortable figure for a lot of Republicans,” Carville says. “They want to move beyond her. We like her.”
“Luckily, she seems to present us with an opportunity every few days,” added a senior Dem strategist. “You could say it’s a turkey shoot.”
The increasing use of Palin is already on display. The DCCC blasted out a fundraising email the other day hammering her and “no, baby, no” Republicans who are “standing in President Obama’s way,” associating the current GOP with the partisan heat of 2008. Dems also featured an image of Palin in a new, last minute mailer that just went out hitting the GOP candidate in the white-hot New York House special election as a patsy of Rush — and Palin.
Such efforts are aimed at the Dem base. But House Dem strategists hope she can be used to damage the GOP’s image with swing constituencies in the 2010 elections. “When she was campaigning, she rubbed suburban and independent women the wrong way,” one House Dem strategist says. “They are generally very moderate, and she’s a reminder of the extremism of the party and other aspects of it they dislike.”
We’re asking the RNC for comment. Something to keep an eye on…
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