Obama Blocks McCain’s Last Gambit
McCain is going negative. Sarah Palin has already gone negative, saying Obama is best friends with a terrorist. Sure, that is a lie, proven so when Hillary Clinton tried to use William Ayers against him during the primaries. Indeed, independent 527s have spent $10 million for ads on both Ayers and Rev. Wright, to little effect. Indeed, the malicious emails calling Obama a muslim terrorist have been around for years now, to little affect.
But it is all McCain has left. He and his advisors and other Republican strategists proudly proclaimed they were going negative. In fact, a McCain advisor said “We have to change the subject from the economy.” That was a stupid move from a stupid yet evil campaign. The ad above by Obama is a preemptive strike to negate any McCain attack. Its aim is to discredit McCain before he goes overwhelmingly negative.
Sadly, this is where McCain has been taking his campaign since August. Thank goodness for Clinton’s attacks in the Spring, the attacks will have helped Obama in the next 30 days.
McCain has become the boy who cried wolf. Not sure if anyone (other than his dwindling base) will take these attacks seriously.
Obama is refuting McCain’s character assassination every day with his calm, intelligent, serious demeanor – in other words, gravitas. Presidential temperament.
When McCain makes those wild charges against Obama, all America has to do is look across at the other podium and they will see that McCain is lying. It is going to get uglier for McCain.
This is an example of where the long, drawn out primary against Hillary Clinton made Obama a better candidate. Not only are these attacks old and discredited, but now Obama has well though-out answers for them.
I think this will ricochet badly on McCain. Now McCain and Palin’s associations can all be questioned. Palin should be careful, considering her associations with the “Jews for Jesus” guy, the witch-hunting pastor and the Alaska Independence Party. That’s all pretty new. McCain, of course, is due for a new airing of the Keating Five.
The campaign is pretty nearly past the point where people are making up their minds. If you hate Obama, McCain’s new attacks will make you hate him more. But each day more people are making up their minds, and the trend is for Obama. There are fewer and fewer undecided voters to aim these negative ads at. The polls might move Obama down a little, but they will move McCain’s unfavorables down more. And the McCain camp knows this.
Some lefty 527 should start sending the video recap of Palin’s hands-on, crazy Kenyan, witchhunting preacher’s sendoff to ensure her ‘winning’ her gubernatorial bid.
If there isn’t anything more disturbing to the average American independent undecided about this GOPer ticket I don’t know what it would be.
The hell can’t get worse than the last 8 years.
UI has a real point that you won’t address — character assassinations not only look bad for the McCain camp (his negatives are rapidly falling), but let folks come back and revisit his nebulous history. And, frankly, I think that a wide airing of how his campaign staff consists of old Fannie and Freddie lobbyists would be very useful right about now.
The Ayers stuff is vaporware (and even the wingnut who got access to the Annenberg records couldn’t come up with more than innuendo and insinuations. Don’t believe me? Then go back and look at the WSJ and note where they published the piece. On their opinion page — NOT in the reported part of their paper. Even this new Murdoch organ knew they had nothing. But this is just more conspiracy theory crap (as is Wright as is ACORN) and I’m expecting that the Obama folks know this is coming and are ready to push back.
“And, frankly, I think that a wide airing of how his campaign staff consists of old Fannie and Freddie lobbyists would be very useful right about now.”
Probably not a good idea considering Obama’s Fannie/Freddie connections.
The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.
Ayers is unrepentant. It was his bomb that blew up his girlfriend and 2 other weathermen. Ms Dohrn set the bomb in SF that killed a man. Another man was firebomb and barely got his children out alive.
Chicago loves it radicals that beat the rap because the gov’t screwed up with getting the evidence.
But the rest of the country cannot understand why Obama had Ayers jumpstart his political career and then after Ayers got the Annenberg challenge awarded he got Obama as board President. Then Obama awarded contracts to Ayers’ projects. Cozy deal even for Chicago.
Personally I hope that Ayers and Dohrn burn in hell since they escaped justice here. But they are in the Chicago as professors infecting new young people with their cancerous ideas that believed it was good to kill police, military, judges and parents. Many of the weathermen were infatuated with Manson and the fork salute the weatherman used.
These are not the type of professors I would like teaching my children.
Now Obama is not responsible for Ayers and Dohrn’s past but why did he think it is ok to work and associate with them?
You can tell that McCain is losing badly — he has to resurrect his bullshit, which is busily being factchecked and debunked (again) by the McCain-loving AP and by CNN and there will be more throughout the week so expect another week where the media calls out McCain and Palin as liars. This Ayers thing didn’t work out too well for Hillary (because it was false and because the media was suspicious of why her camp was pushing this story).
But McCain’s honor is well past rescuing at this point. The flopsweat from the McCain camp though — that’s pretty bad though.
The guilt by association is a dangerous game that republicans might want to avoid.
Paul Begala shows how the game could be played: But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”
I don’t understand why I’m supposed to care about Ayers. I’m not obsessed with the 60s. I’m more worried about the 2000s. Has McCain ever had to apologize for his association with convicted criminal G. Gordon Liddy, a man who told his radio audience to shoot ATF agents in the head?
Now we’re going to hear about McCain and the Keating Five, something which actually has relevance to what’s happening today.
http://www.keatingeconomics.com