…that Republicans won’t ever be innocent of these charges of “mudslinging,” until they actively campaign for democrats?
It’s disheartening to see the 2008 presidential campaign sink into smear tactics. This raises ugly echoes of the false Swift Boat accusations of 2004 and the racist Willie Horton ads of 1988.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin stooped to mud-slinging by saying Democrat Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” because he served on boards with Dr. William Ayers, a 60-year-old University of Illinois distinguished professor who was a youthful leader of the radical Weather Underground one-third of a century ago, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1970s when Obama was a tot.
The McCain-Palin ticket should beware of such hatchet jobs, because both GOP nominees are vulnerable to counterattacks.
McCain betrayed his crippled first wife and lived with beer heiress Cindy Hensley, whose father had been convicted of mob bootlegging charges. McCain used Hensley money and connections to succeed in Arizona politics. He nearly sank politically because he pulled Washington strings to help crooked financier Charles Keating, who went to prison after his savings-and-loan chain cost U.S. taxpayers billions.
Palin is vulnerable because she has spent her life in Pentecostal churches where members speak in tongues, cast out demons, await the Rapture, practice faith healing and try to ward off witches. So far, the Obama-Biden campaign has declined to question her fitness in this regard.
Really, they have? They have so declined? The “in this regard” must be the magic loophole here. “Ah yes, we’ve questioned Sarah Palin’s fitness in the regard of being pro-life, of having five kids, of having not gone to Wellesly or Yale, of wearing porn-star hooker glasses, of buying a tanning bed, of being Governor only as long as our Messiah has been a Senator, of leaving herself vulnerable to her personal e-mail being illegally hacked, of her husband getting a DUI twenty-two years ago…but not specifically in the regard of speaking in tongues and handling snakes!”
Millions upon millions of voters this year are voting not quite so much for McCain, but against Barack Obama. Depending on your personal issue priorities, that’s quite a legitimate position to take — just as it’s quite a legitimate position to vote for Obama because you want the war to end (just, in my humble opinion, misguided…nevertheless, legitimate). If it’s legitimate for people to vote for McCain for this reason, that his opponent is unacceptable, it is quite legitimate for McCain to remind them of this, and to go after converts under the same rationale.
The editorial goes on to state…
After eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, America faces a nightmare. The national debt has leaped past $10 trillion, with no stabilizing in sight. Three-quarters of a million U.S. jobs have been lost so far this year, including 159,000 last month. The stock market plunge has wiped out trillions in personal savings. The unnecessary Iraq war has killed more than 4,000 young Americans.
McCain is tied tightly to the Bush-Cheney agenda because he supported invading Iraq, supported deregulation that brought the Wall Street financial meltdown, and supported trillion-dollar tax giveaways to the wealthy that wrought monster deficits and the soaring national debt.
These are the overriding concerns of the 2008 presidential campaign. They mustn’t be camouflaged by petty mudslinging attacks.
Which raises my question — what is there for the McCain campaign to do, exactly? What if the McCain campaign woke up one morning and decided “Hey, let’s not do anything the esteemed editors of the Charleston Gazette don’t want us to do”? What then? Would the esteemed editors remain unsatisfied in their thirst for a civil tone, until the McCain headquarters started handing out Obama/Biden buttons?
From where I sit, that’s very likely to be the case. It’s like the joke of the corrupt defense attorney saying “I object, Your Honor, when the prosecution says he intends to prove my client’s guilt! It prejudices the jury for him to prove my client’s guilt!”
I jest, but only slightly. Insignificantly, in fact. We seem to have truly arrived at that moment in history at which Republicans are thought to engage in “smear tactics,” simply by pointing out the reasons why voters should choose them as opposed to the other guy.
Meanwhile, you ask Barack Obama what kind of syrup he wants to put on his waffles on any given morning, he can’t answer your question without going into some meaningless litany about how Bush has screwed something up. You know, in my world, if that’s not connected in some way to the question you were asking him…that adequately qualifies as “mud-slinging.” So from where I sit, he’s been doing that, and very little else, all year. Am I figuring that wrong? If so, where? And if not, when do we start going after the Obama/Biden ticket to start engaging a more civil tone and start answering our damn questions?
Palin emerges as the true heroine here, fighting the good fight. She’s representing the rest of us. We’re out here in “flyover country,” living our lives…our normal lives…and Washington, DC is getting further and further away from us. Quite frankly, we don’t know what to make of it. We’re working and paying bills, and nobody’s bailing us out of things. This “Dick Cheney” guy Biden kept bashing all night long, calling him the most dangerous Vice President ever — what is the Cheney doctrine, anyway? It’s also called the 
6. I loved it when she made that comment about being for things before you’re against ’em, and how hard it is for her to understand how things work in the beltway. That’s a true Mister Smith Goes To Washington moment right there. If it was some big ol’ Paul Bunyan lookin’ guy in a plaid shirt with a big blue ox and a giant axe in his hand saying that, he’d get voted in in a landslide. Well, that’s exactly what Sarah Palin is. In a skirt.
More than one “princess” has been raised to womanhood on Brothers Grimm fairy tales, convinced that once she cuts the cake and zips off to the honeymoon, life will be wonderful and perfect. And then been subsequently disappointed to learn all about the responsibilities of adulthood, from diapers that need changing to husbands living life for the moment, waxy yellow buildup, divorce lawyers, etc. Said princesses were brought up to deal with life by not believing in it — by looking forward to a complete eradication of all the exigencies and uncertainties that go with the living of life. That’s where the slobbering Obama fan is. That is precisely where the Obama fanbase is. They think the Chosen One will place his hand on the Bible, take the oath, and everything will smell like unicorn farts.
Fact checkers will be working hard. Palin’s misstatements will be equivalent to 
Questions are being raised about the objectivity of Thursday’s vice presidential debate moderator after news surfaced that she is releasing a new book that appears to promote Barack Obama and other black politicians who have benefited from the civil rights struggle.
Barack Obama has a bracelet, too.
But I still think Lifson is on to something. Because depending on where you live, your decision making activities during “attention season” are going to be driven not so much by pressure, but by a vacuum. That’s not necessarily true where I live, where you can regularly glance at sun-bunnies catching some rays in their tiny bikinis after Halloween (which is awesome, by the way). But…that’s Sacramento. Most places around this country, there are all kinds of distractions right up until Labor Day, after which there’s a shortage of things to do for fun.