This Sunday morning, the news is full of desperation as reflected in the Palin/McCain strategies. The Washington Post has an article about how the Palin/McCain campaign intends to get “fiercer” on the campaign trail. Ignoring for a moment the images of cornered wild animals that come to mind, one wonders how the Palin/McCain campaign could go more on the attack. Their ads are 100% negative already, and independent sources find lies and distortions in nearly every ad. What more can they do? Simple. The Palin/McCain campaign will start throwing out the accusations that until now have resided in furtive emails and with marginal talk radio whack jobs. Here’s the top of the Palin/McCain ticket employing the Bill Ayers theme, from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport: “Our opponent . . . is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She also said, “This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.”

This is a personal attack, of course, on an association of Barack Obama, even though he has condemned Bill Ayers’ past actions. The top of the Palin/McCain ticket, Sarah Palin, ignores that fact in order to excite the base, and at the same time promotes the basest of arguments against the candidacy of Barack Obama. We now see the pit bull in action. Well, we should have expected that, since the winks and “you betchas” aren’t helping among women voters. Here’s some of those reactions to Palin from women in Florida who watched the Palin/Biden debate together. (Why is the top of the GOP ticket, Sarah Palin, debating the Dem No. 2, Joe Biden?) From the Guardian:

But for the host Kit Pepper, 52, a member of the non-partisan League of Women Voters, Palin’s winking was an affront to the years she spent trying to build up her own political consultancy firm in a male-dominated world.

“She winked at us,” Pepper said in disbelief. “All the claims that the media is sexist and the Democrats are being sexist are out the window. The fact that this woman as a vice-presidential candidate stood on national TV and winked at me completely insults me.”

. . .

Some of the Republicans could not help disassociating themselves from Palin - even while praising her skill at using winks and a folksy turn of phrase to connect with middle America.

“I can’t imagine myself doing that wink,” said Lydia Gardner, a Republican local government official first elected in 1987. “I lived in Boston. I lived in Washington and I went to a very cosmopolitan and very sophisticated university where that wink maybe would not have been done. But for her, and for where she is from and for her background it’s perfectly appropriate.”

Sarah Palin using her feminine wiles and winking at the audience just isn’t working, even among the GOP crowd. Rare it is that the top of any ticket is given the task to go negative, but the positive and bubbly Sarah Palin just isn’t connecting, even with Republican women. That explains why she’s the one to use “terrorist” and “Obama” in the same sentence. Desperation, bred partly by falling poll numbers and an electoral college calculation that is running Obama’s way, is leading to the new Palin/McCain strategy, where the don’t just throw John McCain, the Number 2 on their ticket, at Obama and Biden as a pit bull, but they’re also throwing the headliner Sarah Palin out there and telling her to attack. Desperation breeds ugliness, and that’s what the Republicans promise for the last month of the campaign.

Of course, the timing of this negative assault on the airways by the Palin/McCain team is off. Here’s what they say the plan is going to be, from yesterday’s Washington Post:

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain’s team has decided that its emphasis on the senator’s biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan’s campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Being so aggressive has risks for McCain if it angers swing voters, who often say they are looking for candidates who offer a positive message about what they will do. That could be especially true this year, when frustration with Washington politics is acute and a desire for specifics on how to fix the economy and fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is strong.

Oh, yes, the timing is off. It is off in the sense that they are starting too early. 30 days of relentless negatives is going to hurt the Palin/McCain ticket far more than it will help them, as the article notes. But further, the top of the Palin McCain ticket has to worry about some associations of her own with the whole “Troopergate” mess, which is going to come out in the middle of the thirty day Palin/McCain negative campaign surge. It’s not going to look good for them when their campaign goes all negative all the time while the headlines are going negative on the Republican leader Sarah Palin. Oh, this is a failed strategy waiting to happen.

Meanwhile, the stars are aligning for Obama. Bruce Springsteen gathered a crowd of 50,000 people here in Philadelphia yesterday, many of them signing up to volunteer for the Obama campaign, and you can expect the same positive crowd in Columbus today. Jay-Z is doing similar work in Detroit today, in a state that McCain has abandoned. Sure, there are celebrities who are backing the bottom half of the Palin/McCain ticket, most notably the country stars John Rich and Gretchen Wilson, but there seems to be no push by celebrities or singers on the GOP side for the top of their ticket, the unsinkable Sarah Palin. One would think they would be promoting such stars, if they exist.

Yeah, I’m smelling desperation in the Palin/McCain campaign strategy to go all negative all the time. This is the kind of desperation that caused McCain to recruit Palin to head the ticket back about six weeks ago, and it is the kind of desperation that has Palin batting her eyes and winking in order to get the MILF vote. I am happy to see this sort of desperation. It will make me smile all day.