Our guest blogger is Stefan Forbes, an Emmy-nominated director whose film, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, is coming to 35 cities before the election.

As the director of the new, critically acclaimed documentary film about the late Republican operative Lee Atwater, I am constantly asked one thing: Will the Lee Atwater playbook save McCain and Palin on Nov. 4th?

My film, “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,” tracks how Atwater gave the GOP a playbook that has been winning elections even after his death. His central insight was to reach deep into voters’ hearts, inflaming emotions about race and cultural symbols like the flag, guns, and elitism. He used the media as an echo chamber to push issues off the front page and make campaigns all about resentment, mockery, and fear. In the words of Atwater’s disciple Tucker Eskew, now a Senior Advisor to the McCain campaign:

Resentment became the destiny of the Republican Party.

Will this work again in 2008? Will swing state voters like those in New Hampshire forget about an ongoing global financial crisis brought on by Republican deregulation and crony capitalism, choosing to believe that Obama is a “bad guy”?

Let’s look at how it worked back in 1988, when Atwater was confronted by voter revulsion with eight years of GOP rule. Voters disliked the WASPy, elite George H.W. Bush, the ballooning Federal deficit, the Reagan/Bush administrations’s unpopular, illegal war in Nicaragua, and the covert arms sales to Iranian terrorists that Reagan had lied about on national television.

To the disbelief of both Republican and Democratic strategists, who thought the public would never swallow it, Atwater hammered Dem nominee Mike Dukakis’s little-known stance on mandatory Pledge of Allegiance rules for schoolchildren. He also talked endlessly about a black guy who had escaped from a prison furlough, vowing to make Willie Horton Mike Dukakis’ running mate. Although Dukakis was a centrist candidate who had achieved the American Dream through hard work and relentless moral integrity, Atwater successfully painted him as a dangerous, foreign-seeming liberal elitist who didn’t love America and couldn’t keep us safe. Ring any bells?

It should. On Sunday Sarah Palin told a crowd, “We know who the bad guys are, OK?” and was greeted with cries of “Obama!” She said, “We know that in the war, it’s terrorists, terrorists who hate America and her allies and would seek to destroy us, and the bad guys are those who would support and sympathize with the terrorists.” Not surprisingly, their crowds have begun shouting that Obama is a terrorist, has committed treason, and should be killed. The GOP is also inciting racial resentment by falsely accusing ACORN of voter fraud and trying to blame America’s economic meltdown on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

McCain and Palin have already adopted the Atwater playbook. Whether it will help them win the 2008 election is still up in the air. Watch a clip of Boogie Man here:

The NY Times calls Boogie Man “riveting” and honored it as a Critic’s Pick. The LA Times calls it “hugely entertaining,” Entertainment Weekly says it’s “incisive…terrific!” and the Washington Post says “In this can’t-look-away documentary…there is more than one moment that will likely pop your jaw open.” You can see the trailer and find national playdates at www.BoogieManFilm.com.

In April, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that “you could make an argument that there’s been great progress economically” since President Bush took office. He then revised that argument in August, releasing an ad that declared “we’re worse off than we were four years ago.”

Now McCain is revising his timeline again. In an interview with right-wing radio host Michael Medved this past Friday, McCain agreed with Medved’s assertion that “the economy was really progressing pretty well under most of President Bush’s term” before Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007:

MEDVED: Let me ask you one other thing senator, which again, I think is on the minds of lots and lots of our listeners. The economy was really progressing pretty well under most of President Bush’s term. Then the Democrats took over in Congress in 2007 and now we’re in this horrible crisis. Coincidence?

MCCAIN: No, it isn’t.

McCain went on to place the blame for the financial crisis on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, claiming that Democrats “were willing co-conspirators with this game of three-card monty that went on and then it collapsed.” Listen to it here:

Medved and McCain’s claim that “the economy was progressing really well” before Democrats took control of Congress is laughable. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Christian Weller’s economic snapshot from December 2006 shows, the economy was already in rough shape:

Famly Debt Was Rising: By September 2006, household debt rose to an unprecedented 130.9% of disposable income. From March 2001 to September 2006, personal debt relative to disposable income grew each quarter by 1.6 percentage points—almost five times faster than in the 1990s. In the second quarter of 2006, families had to spend 14.4% of their disposable income to service their debt—the largest share since 1980.

The Housing Market Had Slowed: The supply of homes for sale each month averaged 6.9 months of supply for the six months ending in October 2006—the largest supply since 1991.

Savings Had Plummeted: The personal saving rate of -1.3% in the third quarter of 2006 marked the sixth quarter in a row with a negative personal saving rate.

As for McCain’s claim that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the central cause of the current economic crisis, McClatchy thoroughly debunked it over the weekend, writing that “private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis.” McClatchy notes that the “weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages” began in late 2004 while Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.

Transcript: Read more

Last month, Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake said that administrating the new GI Bill will “tax VA’s resources” and announced that “the decision has been made to seek private-sector support to implement this new program.” However, the Army Times reports today that the VA has scuttled the controversial plan after it could not find a contractor. “Instead, VA officials will rely on its own employees to create and implement” the bill’s provisions. Veterans groups had slammed the plan to hire an outside contractor, saying the “level of service [wouldn't] be the same.”