"Will right wing bloggers shoot their candidate in the foot again this year?"

Over at The Richmonder, JC Wilmore asks:

...There's no question that Allen's "A-Team" hurt him with the press and with those following the race online. Will right wing bloggers shoot their candidate in the foot again this year?

[...]

...What will happen when the tea party movement turns out to rally for McDonnell--as they almost certainly will--will they bring their Obama-as-witch-doctor posters? And what impact will that image have on Virginia's electorate in 2009?

Excellent questions. I've actually been pondering a hypothesis recently, that whenever the fringes of either left or right take to the streets, it hurts whatever cause they're espousing. Why is this? Basically, because the "silent majority" of Americans are turned off by the extreme rhetoric (whether "Bush=Hitler" or "Obama=Hitler") and fringe causes (whether "Abolish the Fed" or "Free Mumia") they see in what might otherwise be protests about legitimate issues. For instance, in the anti-Iraq war movement, there weren't only people who believed we should pull out of Iraq, there were also people who believed that 9/11 was an "inside job," that Israel was evil, that the war in Afghanistan was wrong as well, etc. Let's face it, stuff like this is bound to turn off the vast majority of Americans who don't believe it, who don't like hearing their president called "Hitler" or "Osama bin Laden" or whatever. Same thing with Glenn Beck's "9/12" protests, with Catherine Crabill's "ballot box" comments, with the cries of "socialism/Nazism/Communism," all that nuttiness we've been seeing the past few months, mainly on the right-wing side of the spectrum.

Here in Virginia, back in 2006 we had George Allen's blogger "A Team" pounding Jim Webb for - among other things - supposedly being a "pedophile" because he wrote, honestly but without the least bit of prurient interest, what he observed in Southeast Asia. And, as is often the case with brutally honest writers, some of what Jim Webb observed was highly distasteful to Western sensibilities. That's what great literature, fiction or nonfiction, is all about. And Jim Webb is a great writer, his readings recommended by the military academies and hailed by critics across the political spectrum. Not surprisingly, then, the "A Team's" bizaare accusations that Webb was a "pedophile" didn't help the "A Team's" candidate. In fact it almost certainly backfired. As former Allen for Senate netroots coordinator Jon Henke put it in an interview for Netroots Rising, the pro-Allen bloggers were "er, inexpert." Here's hoping that they're just as "er, inexpert" this year as well! :)