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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
Here's mud in your eye | page 1, 2, 3 Graham wasn't able to provide documentation for his charges. The Bush campaign denies them. And there's no way to pin the pure ugliness of this campaign against McCain on the Bush team. Politics breeds partisans, and whether any groups coordinating the smear campaigns are working with direction from the Bush campaign or out of their own zealous desire to see their guy win is impossible to say. The tactics so far, after all, have been sophomoric enough that anybody could have thought of them. For example, there's the constant barrage of "push polls" -- the term of art for polls in which the purpose is not so much to gauge a voter's opinion as to spread dirt about an opponent, usually of the most unseemly kind. South Carolina was home to one of the ugliest push polls in national history, of course, done on behalf of Bush buddy ex-Gov. Carroll Campbell, during his 1978 race for the House against Max Heller. The push polls revealed that Heller would be hurt if voters learned that he was, according to the New York Times, "a foreign-born Jew who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior." The push polls made against McCain -- by who knows whom on behalf of who knows what -- weren't necessarily as ugly, though who knows what they might have been were McCain not just another old Christian white guy. But the phone calls have also certainly backfired, with some not interested in associating with the Bush supporters -- rogue or otherwise -- making the phone calls. Carolyn Whitney, a 66-year-old retired psychiatric nurse in Summerville, S.C., is a lifelong Republican who worked for Bush's dad in 1980. But last week a woman identifying herself with a group called something like "South Carolina Families for Bush," Whitney says, phoned her. "They said they wanted to let me know that George Bush was pro-life and he would protect babies and that John McCain is a killer of babies," Whitney recalls. The caller accused McCain -- who has a 17-year pro-life voting record that has never dipped below its 80 percent rating by National Right to Life Committee tabulations -- of being just the opposite. "They said he votes for abortion on demand and is going to have [pro-choice ex-New Hampshire Sen. Warren] Rudman as his attorney general." Whitney hung up. "It reinforced my decision that I don't think George Bush is ready to be president." Then came the e-mail, first reported by CNN's Jonathan Karl on Tuesday evening, from Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand, saying that McCain "chose to focus his life on partying, playing, drinking and womanizing." In the e-mail Hand, with not an iota of evidence, also claimed that McCain "chose to sire children without marriage." And on Tuesday, a new political action committee called Keep It Flying was born -- its cause the Confederate flag. Now both Bush and McCain are a little squishy on the flag; both have retreated into the comfort of calling it a states' rights issue. But Keep It Flying has decided that there's a world of difference between the two men's takes, and the mysterious, spontaneously generated organization is now running around spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell South Carolina that McCain's a Yankee-lovin' rebel hater. Which may be just as bad -- at least to the voters Bush is trying to appeal to -- as a homo lover, clearly the message Bush was trying to make during Tuesday night's debate when he winkingly -- and falsely -- told the television audience that McCain had been endorsed by a gay Republican group, the Log Cabin Republicans. "He knows it's not true," says Kevin Ivers, director of public affairs for the Log Cabin Republicans. "And it's a shame that his campaign has degenerated into this. He had an incredible opportunity to unify the party six or seven months ago, and it seems that because of their strategy in South Carolina they've just blown it." Bush has gays affiliated with his campaign, after all, like Bush delegate D.C. Councilman David Catania and delegate alternate Carl Schmid, a lobbyist who's on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. "They went from compassionate conservatism to just downright mean," says Graham. "The persona of George Bush nationally has changed in South Carolina. He will leave this state not the guy he was when he came. It's a campaign that lost its way after New Hampshire." On "Meet the Press" Sunday, Bush acknowledged how he recently got in touch with his dark side. "I came up in Texas politics. I understand," Bush said. "What does that mean?" host Tim Russert asked. "Well, it means I understand the rough and tumble of politics," Bush responded. "And I understand how to defend myself, and I'm going to do so."
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