SALON

Thursday, Dec 20, 2007 9:19 PM UTC

One big bag of tricks

What's McCain denying? Who's Tancredo endorsing? Is the Clinton camp trying to fool Iowans?

By

Topics: 2008 Elections, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, War Room, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, John McCain, R-Ariz., Tom Tancredo,

The presidential campaign may be starting to pack up for Christmas, but the tidings of comfort and joy — nice cross, Huck! — haven’t stopped a whole flurry of weirdness from coming across the transom this afternoon.

We begin on the front page of the Drudge Report, where a worried-looking John McCain is said to be working furiously to keep the New York Times from publishing a “high-impact report involving key telecom legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee.” Like the folks at the Hotline, we wouldn’t think much of this — when you’ve got Matt Drudge quoting folks identified as “newsroom insiders,” some degree of skepticism is certainly in order — except that the McCain campaign has seen fit to issue a denial. “It is unfortunate that rumor and gossip enter into political campaigns,” the campaign says in a statement. “John McCain has a 24-year record of serving this country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the important issues facing our country.”

Is the campaign denying that it’s trying to keep the Times from publishing? Denying that the Times is working on a story? Or denying the underlying allegations that such a story might or might not make?

We’re not sure that we know. What we do know — because ABC News tells us so — is that the Hillary Clinton campaign, which has been raising questions about Barack Obama having voted “present” occasionally as an Illinois state senator, has registered the domain names of two sites it might use to attack Obama further. There’s nothing on votingpresent.com or votingpresent.org just yet, but ABC says the domains are hosted by the same I.P. address as some official Clinton Web sites and that the campaign intends to use them to paint Obama as “cowardly.” Team Clinton went down that road earlier today, when it had Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Anthony Weiner host a conference call with reporters to accuse Obama of taking the easy way out on tough votes in Illinois.

Meanwhile, John Edwards’ campaign is complaining that it’s at the receiving end of a dirty trick from the Clinton-endorsing American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. A flier from the group uses Edwards’ words to criticize Obama’s healthcare plan, maybe leaving voters with the message that the attack on Obama is coming from Edwards rather than from an organization aligned with Clinton. “Either they are trying to trick people, or they’ve realized that on health care, John Edwards is the candidate who speaks honestly about what it really costs and what will be required to have truly universal coverage,” Edwards’ Iowa state director says in a statement. “It’s fine to have an honest debate about policy, but Iowans deserve better than planted questions and campaign fliers designed to fool them.”

We’re in no position to say what Iowans do or don’t deserve — that’s a job for someone else — but what Mitt Romney apparently deserves is the endorsement of Tom Tancredo. The Colorado representative, who dropped out of the race today, said that staying in might have split the vote among immigration hard-liners and allowed Mike Huckabee or John McCain to secure the Republican presidential nomination. Tancredo may be overstating his stature as a vote-splitting threat: In most national polls, he was drawing all of 1 percent of the vote.

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog. More Tim Grieve.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 9 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
238 points239 points | 15 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
241 points242 points | 213 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
203 points204 points | 31 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
77 points78 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
71 points72 points | 4 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations