Your humble Blog Goliard has been closely following recent discussion in The Corner, and he agrees with Rich Lowry that Jonah Goldberg came up with a good way of making the case on Bill Ayers. A big reason that even folks like Peggy Noonan have been shrugging so far about the Ayers issue is that the case has not been made this well, not yet.

The most common wrong way to make the case has been to simply try to startle people with the association on its own: “OMG! Obama knows a guy who was a domestic terrorist! Boo!”

It can be done much better. One way is the way Jonah suggested: to roll this into a campaign against the Democratic Congress.

Another right way would be to keep hammering away at the continuing pattern of deception and deceit that we see from the Obama campaign, as they keep trying to spin and sweep away his Chicago associations. (It’s the coverup that’s supposed to always get you in the end, right?)

Yet another right way would zero in on the purpose of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge itself. The problem with Obama’s participation in that is not that it brought him into contact with Ayers. That’s small potatoes. The problem—the really big problem—is that the CAC was Ayers’ pet project, designed to spend tens of millions of dollars teaching young Chicagoans how to follow in Ayers’ immoral, destructive, America-loathing footsteps.

Barack Obama was asked to help lead this project.

And he said yes.

In that role he dutifully funneled money to Ayers and to his socialist and Maoist and radical friends. The importance of this must be emphasized: Obama wasn’t just a pal of an unrepentant Weatherman criminal. He put himself in a position to place millions of dollars into that man’s hands, and did so without any evident twinge of conscience.

To whom will he give money—billions this time, not millions—if we put him in the White House?

One more right way to approach Ayers would be to not mention him in isolation, but always as part of a pattern: an illustration of just how central the radical Left is to who Obama is and where he comes from. He got his radicalism literally with his mother’s milk, and then from Communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, from the radicals he attached himself to at Occidental, from Professor Said and the Columbia gang, from his Alinskyite and ACORN colleagues, from political sponsor and mentor Ayers, from spiritual mentor Wright…any one of these could be excused, but it adds up. It really adds up.

And it’s easily enough distilled into a zinger, which I offer to Senator McCain free of charge:

“Senator Obama has spoken movingly about his love for his country. I take him at his word on that. But would it have killed him to make some friends who love America too?”

And further:

“When you elect a President, you don’t just choose an individual. One man can’t run the executive branch all by himself. A new President brings with him a team, a large team. People like Wright and Ayers have always been key players on Obama’s team. Will that suddenly change when he reaches the White House? Will all his old friends and longtime supporters who are Marxists and racists and raving anti-American lunatics be scrupulously kept out of his administration, at every level in every department? My friends, I don’t know Barack Obama well enough to say for sure…and neither do any of you.”

In sum, while Rich Lowry is again right when he says that the Ayers connection is not a “magic bullet” (the other points he makes in this Corner post are also solid), it is far from a sideshow. Especially since we are dealing with a candidate about whom we truly know so little, compared with most any other major-party Presidential nominee any of us have seen in our lifetimes.

Your humble Blog Goliard wasn’t as pleased as some of his NRO friends by the first two debates. The scorecard chez Goliard showed them as:

1. Draw (which helped Obama).

2. Draw among viewers who didn’t realize how full of nonsense Biden was; moderate Palin win among those who did. (Either way, that helped Palin, and may or may not have helped McCain a little.)

Perhaps that confers a little extra credibility as I dissent a little in the opposite direction this time, with my non-garment-rending opinion on the third:

3. Slight Obama win among voters who respond more to tone; moderate McCain win among voters who respond more to content. And a ginormous loss for Tom Brokaw and the Commission on Presidential Debates.

I also think that the latter result will outshine the former as this debate is remembered, even in a few days’ time; and would be destined to even if McCain had done better than he did.

We knew all along that it would take a knockout blow for the debate to really move the race, and the overall stinkiness of the question selection and moderation only made that more certain.

But, while it may not have mattered much in the end, I should say that McCain was in many places as good as I’ve seen him (though, admittedly, that’s not the highest of bars to clear). And I, at least, felt less frustrated than after the first debate—McCain finally got round to hitting some of the notes that I had, from my couch, been clamoring for him to hit last time.

So, to sum up: the race is pretty much as it was yesterday morning. Our guy is behind, but still able to win this thing with enough hard, smart campaigning…and a little luck.

We fight on; we fight to win.

Those fools. Those stampeding fools.

Congresscritters of both parties had better hope it never fully sinks in, with the public, just what they’ve now got in this new Sandwich Deluxe.

When the Paulson plan was first unveiled, an open path to victory lay ahead of John McCain: Say “Hell, no!” to this particular package, and run like crazy against Congress more generally.

I hope he enjoys the Strange New-Old Respect he’ll get once he’s re-inducted into the Acceptable Republicans Club (a.k.a. Lost Like He Was Supposed To Club).

As for the rest of America: Welcome to 1990s Japan! Enjoy!

Jay Nordlinger writes in The Corner:

As a political tactician, I don’t have Karl Rove’s stature, or any.…But one thing seems to me fairly obvious: Job No. 1 for McCain-Palin should have been to define Obama and Biden as too liberal for America. And that shouldn’t have been too hard. This is just about the leftest ticket we’ve ever seen. But have they done it? I don’t think so.

Strange, that.

I wish it seemed strange to me too. But mostly it seems familiar. Your humble Blog Goliard has spent too much of the last eight years—and, come to think of it, more than he wanted of the previous twelve as well—talking back to Republican leaders on his television. “No, you fool…don’t say that, say this! Don’t concede that point; don’t forget your best argument, which would be this; no, for the love of God, don’t vote for that…” et cetera, ad nauseam.

And what of McCain-Palin?

My hope is that they’re holding their most effective fire for the last two weeks. Remember, after all, how quickly the Obama campaign and its willing allies in the press were able to turn Jeremiah Wright from “Danger! Danger! Game-changing campaign killer!” to eye-rolling “I can’t believe you still care about that” old news.

My fear is that, once again, we’ve got a Republican standard-bearer who can’t make the (perfectly good) case for himself effectively to save his life—or isn’t allowed to, by the geniuses on his staff.

It’s going to be a long month.

Your humble Blog Goliard has come round to the opinion that the failure of the bailout package in Congress on Monday was a good thing. But even if Congress wound up doing the right thing, they did it almost by accident, and in most unseemly fashion. Their poll numbers are sure to be taking further drops.

Yet, as noted before, more than 90% of these Congresscritters are still set to roll to re-election next month. For an institution which more than 90% of the public rightly reviles to preserve that many of its members makes no sense. No, wait, that’s not strong enough. Try this: the re-election of any of these people—any of them—at this point is now officially obscene.

I urge you to not participate in this obscenity.

This Goliard still intends to vote for John McCain for President (if he can somehow avoid driving me completely crazy before Election Day); and he still very much hopes that by some miracle the Republicans can re-capture at least one house of Congress, preferably the Senate. But he shall not vote to return any incumbent member of Congress to office—not his Republican Senator, nor his Republican Congressman—no matter how much regard he may have for the man, or how little regard he may have for his opponent.

If there is a Democrat running for whom your Goliard may vote without having to go immediately to Confession afterwards, he will do so; if there is a Libertarian alternative, so much the better; if neither of these are true, he will simply not vote in that race.

My fellow citizens, please, for the love of God and our fair Democracy, whether you are a Democrat or Republican or Independent or Libertarian or Other, do not vote to return any incumbent to Congress. I don’t care who your Senators or Representative may be—just don’t do it. Defeat them all, and let God and their surprised successors sort it out from there.

Slay them all.

(Politically! Just politically!)

It’s the only way.