After weeks of often ineffectual negative attacks against Barack Obama, the McCain campaign seems to have settled on a new rhetorical approach to use against the Democratic nominee: he's a socialist. Nearly 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall it seems the Red Menace has returned to the campaign trail. Yet at a time when the economy is faltering and voters are looking for government to lend a helping hand such attacks have little chance of succeeding.

In a sense, Mr. Obama has no one to blame but himself for this new GOP attack. It is a direct result of his now legendary sidewalk encounter with "Joe the Plumber" in Ohio. There, the Democrat defended his proposal for raising taxes on those who make more then $250,000 by saying that well-off Americans need to "share the wealth" with those who were less fortunate. Sen. McCain and his Republican cohorts quickly took this as evidence of Mr. Obama's wealth redistribution tendencies and began to tar him with the socialist label.

Of course, charges of "socialism" are not necessarily new for Republicans: over the past year they have made quite a reappearance in the country's political discourse. During the G.O.P primaries, Rudy Giuliani regularly accused the Democrats of "socialist" intentions, former Governor, Mitt Romney, compared Hillary Clinton's economic policies to those of Karl Marx and during last year's debate over the extension of the SCHIP bill, which provided children's health insurance, accusations of government-run health care were regularly bandied about. Even today at Republican campaign rallies, cries of "Bolshevik," "Communist," "Socialist," even "Go to Cuba" are being heard.
Nonetheless, in the context of today's present political environment it's a somewhat bizarre political broadside. If Mr. Obama is intent on enacting a socialist agenda he is keeping it pretty well hidden. And a tax policy that asks higher earning Americans to pay more and asks lower earning Americans to pay less is not socialism; it is the essence of the country's progressive taxation system. For some Republicans it seems that any deviation from the party's economic orthodoxies is construed as a slippery slope move toward statism.

Accusations of socialism have a particularly strange tinge coming from John McCain. After all it was less a month ago that the U.S. Congress passed a $700 billion bailout package, which included, among other things, a provision that allowed for the Treasury Secretary to basically nationalize the U.S. banking system . . . and John McCain voted for that bill. Today on the campaign trail Mr. McCain regularly talks about his plans to buy up bad mortgages from taxpayers who are in over their head. For those Americans who are making their regular monthly mortgage payments such a plan may sound to them like "sharing of wealth."

But of course charges of socialism have less to do with the reality of Barack Obama's health care policies or his tax plans and more the desire of Republicans to raise fears about Sen. Obama's legislative intentions should he become President. Such attacks are reminiscent of both the familiar GOP charge that Democrats are tax-and-spend and more than a generation of Republicans attacks on Democratic welfare policies (indeed, in his Saturday radio address, Mr. McCain raised the specter of 'welfare' checks being sent to undeserving Americans if Senator Obama is elected). In much the same way that every four years Democrats allege that Republicans want to gut Social Security, the G.O.P is falling back on its quadrennial accusation that Democrats want to increase the role of government, raise taxes, increase spending and strangle the free market with overbearing regulation.

The larger political problem for Republicans, however, and the fly in the ointment to this "socialist" mantra is that more and more Americans are today looking to government to help with the economic challenges facing the country. For example, a government-run single payer health care plan, which Republicans constantly warn against, is actually backed by more than half of all Americans. "Socialist" programs that 'share wealth" like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have broad bipartisan support - and Senator McCain has even decreed that Social Security should be immune from the spending freeze he wants to enact if elected President.

Nearly half of all Americans think there is not enough government regulation of business - a mere quarter think there is too much. Support for a strengthened social safety net is at its highest levels in more than 20 years. In fact, according to a 2007 Pew Research Center poll 69% of Americans think government should care for those who can't take care of themselves and 54% should help the needy even if it puts the country in greater debt. In the wake of the country's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression one would imagine those numbers are even higher today.

Americans today seem far more sympathetic to the notion that government should be playing a more forceful in the workings of the economy - and appear to be relatively unbothered by the fact that Mr. Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and provide tax breaks for those lower down on the food chain. And why should they; it is middle class Americans who will reap the greatest rewards of Mr. Obama's proposed tax policies.

Since the days of the New Deal, Americans have largely accepted the notion that government has a crucial role to play; even if at times have occasionally wanted to see that role be constrained. In fact, it's been many years since a major party candidate has so directly accused his opponent of having socialist intentions; not since the uncompromising Barry Goldwater and before that the hapless Herbert Hoover, who in his 1928 and 1932 runs for the White House regularly warned about socialist economic policies (this fact makes Mr. McCain's recent allegation that Mr. Obama was imitating the policies of Mr. Hoover that much more surreal).

For Republican partisans, Senator McCain's words no doubt resonate, but with a mere two weeks until Americans cast their ballot, it seems highly unlikely that undecided independent voters are going to be swayed by fears of socialism. The reality is that Americans seem far less concerned about socialism; and far more alarmed that the federal government will do nothing at all.

In the end, Senator McCain and Governor Palin are singing off an old Republican attack hymnal, unfortunately for them, it's not so clear that the congregation is paying attention.