McCain Parries a Reprise of ’00 Smear Tactics

[WCGreen]

Source: NYT

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Volunteers making telephone calls for Senator John McCain in South Carolina last weekend noticed something odd: Four people contacted said in remarkably similar language that they opposed Mr. McCain for president because of his 1980 divorce from his first wife, Carol, who raised the couple’s three children while Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

By Tuesday afternoon, a group calling itself Vietnam Veterans Against McCain had sent out a crude flier accusing the candidate of selling out fellow P.O.W.’s to save himself.

By Tuesday evening, a group called Common Sense Issues, which supports Mike Huckabee, had begun making what it said were a million automated calls to households in South Carolina telling voters, according to one of the calls, that Mr. McCain “has voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” (The campaign of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said it had no connection to the group and had asked it to stop the calls.)

Mr. McCain quickly fired back, but he has seen this movie before. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, one of the most notorious smear campaigns in recent American politics peddled distortions and lies about him, among them that Mr. McCain’s current wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, adopted from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, was a black child Mr. McCain had fathered out of wedlock.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/us/politics/17carolina.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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I guess Johnny McCain learned something from the '00 election...

This time he is prepared to combat the smear machine that has alligned with Huckleberry...


Ah, the more things change the more they stay the same in the self proclaimed party of god...

[bluestateguy]

1. I defended Jack McCain from these smears in 2000. I will not do so now.

I don't condone it, but he stood silently by while his friend John Kerry was swiftboated in 2004.

Chickens come home to roost...

[iamjoy]

3. I Will Still Defend Him

at least on the POW issue, because it is wrong.

Yes, there is the thought of lessons to be learned. Perhaps McCain thought kissing up to Dubya the past 8 years would inoculate him from these kinds of attacks.

And I would have no issue attacking McCain on his involvement with the S&L Mess (how much did that cost the American tax payer?) or other distortions of his record. Politics is a dirty game and he is not unblemished.

But, to me it is unconscionable to accuse the man who bears the physical and mental scars of torture - the man who served our country honorably* of abandoning his fellow POWs.

You could argue he deserves it for abandoning Kerry to those attacks in 2004. But it is not about McCain. It is about honor and decency.

*regardless of whether the Vietnam War was a sham, McCain believed he was helping protect our country. as far as I know, he followed the rules for military conduct in accordance with our UCoMJ and the Geneva Convention. for that reason I say he served honorably. anyway, they aren't attacking him for violations of those guidelines.

[TheCowsCameHome]

5. His politics aside, McCain endured more than I can ever imagine

while wearing the uniform of this country.

[trogdor]

4. That's what I said at DailyKos

I got pilloried for it. That and suggesting we pre-emptively throw as much mud at the Republicans as we can. Seems too many Kossacks dislike the idea that this is war, not a friendly game of bridge. Besides, if you want to get the Republicans to go along with you on real, honest to FSM campaign reform, you gotta make them feel your pain.

[SpiralHawk]

2. republicons are into LOW LOW LOW morals and tactics

Tell us again, you republicons sleazebags, about your frickin "family values." BS