So I’m gonna help him out. From the Evans-Novak Political Report:

4. What Republicans fear most is a genuine Obama rightward sidestep toward the middle of the road. The Democratic candidate has picked up some Republican conservative support (the “Obamacons”) without his making a single conciliatory ideological move. What further gains can he make if he shows a little leg on a non-economic issue, such as education and even school vouchers?

This is not what Republicans fear most, or maybe I should say this is not what Republicans with that dangerous little learnin’ fear most. I’d be more alarmed if Obama started blabbering about school vouchers, because what has the federal government to do with those? Nothing at all. Don’t cross the streams. You start messing with the federal tax structure to deal with what is and ought to be a local or at most state-level problem, you’re creating a bigger problem, hands down. That is not a rightward step; it is pandering, and silly pandering at that. As for a genuine Obama rightward step, I’ll believe it when I see it. I consider it flatly impossible.

But the real Novak-flummoxing is in the next point down:

5. The need in Republican ranks is for McCain to do something that generates a little confidence. Just exactly what, nobody is sure.

Oh my. Nobody is sure? “Well, let me enlighten you people.” Dear Senator McCain: Start talking up domestic drilling. Untie the hands of the oil developers. Stop comparing a frozen wasteland to a natural national treasure. Shut your mouth about interfering in the legal workings of corporations. And return to the concept of fixing the borders before considering amnesty. Wow, see how easy that is?

Dear Copywriters Everywhere, Including the Ones on the Email I Just Got from Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions website, where you can sign a petition, for all the good it may do, asking Congress to authorize development of more domestic oil resources:

Stop telling us to “get educated” or “educate yourselves” about anything at all. Go back to the older formulation of “learn more about …” right away. “Get educated about the issues” sounds trendy and pretentious, implies we’re uneducated to start with, and uses an unnecessarily tortured grammatical formulation. “Learn about” or “learn more about” is stronger in both structure and meaning.

Sincerely,
Anwyn