First they jumped on Barack Obama for telling "Joe" the "plumber" that he wants to "spread the wealth around" and now they've unearthed a 7 year old radio interview in which Barack Obama talks about "redistributive change" (transcript is HERE.) It must be pretty important because Drudge has it as his big headlilne of the day and it's led the McCain campaign to break out yet another ridiculous attack on Barack Obama:

At a rally with a few thousand people outside of Dayton, Sen. John McCain slammed his Democratic rival for a 2001 radio interview in which Obama discussed the political science concept of "redistributive change."

"That is what change means for Obama administration -- the Redistributor," McCain said. "It means taking your money and giving it to someone else. He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs."

First of all, let the record show that on This Week yesterday none other than George Will, Cokie Roberts and Peggy Noonan explained the ridiculousness of running against redistributive wealth as a concept, particularly in 2008:

Will: 95% of what the government does is redistribute wealth...

Roberts: And the tax code is filled with redistributive principles.

Noonan: I don't think that what Mrs. Palin was saying there in regard to socialism, etc. is going to get a big response from 8 million new registered voters this cycle many of whom are very young...18, 19, 20...I don't think after the last 7 years it's going to work.

Not to mention that, as Ann Althouse makes clear -- again, no liberal she -- the position Obama is taking in that radio interview is at most "a moderate view of law."

But look at the longer view of what the McCain campaign is doing here by making the election a battle of ideologies. As Marc Ambinder rightly points out:

Whether or not the Frums of the punditosphere are correct, it might be dangerous for the Republican Party to elevate the stakes for this election to a death match between competing ideologies. If Barack Obama's victory is as decisive as it is shaping up to be, the Democrats can justifiably claim that conservatism itself has been rejected as a political and governing philosophy. In the closing weeks of the campaign, as the Republican ticket continues to run against the very idea of progressive politics, they are sowing the seeds of the post-election realignment narrative.

David Sirota made the same point the other day.

We're living through the first election in modern history that is about whether to vote for free market fundamentalism, or vote for a change from that fundamentalism. That choice has not been the creation of Obama, but of the Republicans. And should America vote against free market fundamentalism on election day, the GOP will have helped craft a mandate for a progressive economic era.

The conservative movement folks still believe, you see, that America is, at its core, a conservative nation, so they truly think that if the fight is on this turf, they will win handily. What they don't seem to get is how spectacularly this could backfire on them and on the future of conservatism (unless that's already an oxymoron.) This is one attack on Obama that we should all welcome.