Priming and Poetry

I'm still catching up on all my reading, so I don't know whether anyone (or for that matter everyone) has said this already, but without ascribing motives I'll just mention that it's pretty obviously to the GOP's advantage to get news focus away from Osama bin Laden and on to just about anything else.

Since it's also in the interest of the Democrats to keep the focus on bin Laden, I'll give the following advice to any Dem party hacks that are out there: the proper party hack response to the Common "controversy" is to say that if you kill bin Laden, you get to have anyone over to the White House that you want, since you're the guy who took out bin Laden.

Oh -- I should also mention, I suppose, that any deliberate efforts by either party to affect the size or duration of the bin Laden rally effect are, regardless of how effective in the short term, highly unlikely to matter even a tiny bit in the 2012 elections; that's the whole idea of a "bounce" in approval.

Hope that helps.

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