Muckraking? You ain't seen nothing
Updated on 05 October 2008
The McCain campaign is fighting tougher than ever with spokesman, Tucker Bounds, describing Obama's health care plans as a 'bald-faced lie'
Today the Washington Post reveals a memo from top campaign aide Greg Stimple: "We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days. We are looking forward to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."
As for Sarah Palin (remember the West Wing-style advice from the top to "let Palin be Palin...") well at a Colorado fundraiser last night she described Obama as "our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
This heralds a new raft of negative ads from the McCain team timed to go out after Tuesday's Presidential debate. They'll attempt to link Obama to two men: convicted money launderer Tony Rezko, and a former activist with the Weathermen, William Ayers.
Rezko helped the Obamas to buy their Chicago home in 2005 by purchasing part of the garden next door; he's due to be sentenced a week before polling day for fraud, attempted bribery and money laundering.
Sarah Palin based her comments last night on a New York Times investigation into the whole Ayers connection (proving, perhaps, that she does read those pinko liberal newspapers after all...) Ayers was a founder of the notorious radical group that was behind a bombing campaign in the early 1970s that targeted the Pentagon and the US capital.
Obama didn't meet him until 26 years later when Ayers had become a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Last spring, came the first attempts to link the two. McCain asked: "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"
In August, a group called the American Issues Project spent almost three million dollars on a TV ad highlighting the alleged connections - followed by another conservative movie called "Hype: The Obama Effect".
With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?A Barack Obama campaign advert
Obama's response was to describe Ayers as "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight" and to release a rebuttal ad asking: "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?"
Today's Times concludes that although Obama has played down contacts between the two, they were "not close".
Yet here's yet another ad emanating from supporters of John McCain. All this is designed to fit in with their final, desperate strategy: to get past this economy stuff and depict Obama as some kind of terrorist-loving liar who can't be trusted.
This from another conservative lobbyist, Grant Norquist: "The McCain campaign should be saying 'Let's take the guy's head off. He is a crook'".
And although McCain has told his team not to revisit the scandal over Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, it's widely known that other groups are preparing to put out yet more ads on this theme.
In the endless cycle of attack and rebuttal, Obama's team aren't just taking this lying down. They've prepared an ad of their own echoing that line from the McCain team about trying to "turn a page on the economy".
"Three quarters of a million jobs lost this year. Our financial system in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy. No wonder his campaign wants to change the subject. Turn the page on the financial crisis by launching dishonourable, dishonest assaults against Barack Obama. Struggling families can't turn the page on this economy, and we can't afford another president who is this out of touch." it says.
All of this negativity has been building up for months. Nielsen's latest poll shows that between June 3 and September 7, the Democratic team placed 75,246 ads attacking McCain; the Republican returned fire with 76,238 negative ads against Obama.
Except the latest offerings from the GOP are far nastier, far more vicious in tone than anything we've seen from an official candidate himself. They're being reinforced by carefully chosen remarks from Sarah Palin and senior campaign aides.
One concern for the Republicans is that they may have gone negative too soon. After all, the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex education for kindergartners was weeks ago, it's hard to get much tougher than that.
After the Palin speech last night Obama spokesman Hari Sevugnan called her comments "more gutter politics and false attacks" while Obama himself said most Americans were "tired of the politics of distraction, the politics of division ... that says that the way to win an election is simply to run nasty ads and lie about their opponents"
He might be right. An "emotional response" poll by the organisation SenseUs concludes that most voters don't react well to most negative attack ads but with just 30 days to go and crucial votes at stake don't raise your hopes. It's almost certain to get way, way dirtier than this.
