Obama camp responds to "Mavericks" ad

"McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office," a spokesman says.

Published September 8, 2008 3:37PM (EDT)

Barack Obama's campaign is working to hit back swiftly against John McCain's latest ad, and the message contained within it. In a statement to reporters, Obama spokesman Bill Burton says:

Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush's economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That's the kind of politics people are tired of, and it's anything but change.

A fact-check accompanying the statement repeats the familiar statistic that McCain has voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time. The Obama campaign also includes a rundown of the total number of earmarks for which McCain has voted (not really fair, since they're just counting all the earmarks included in omnibus spending bills, a convenient way of making technically true but misleading attacks against members of Congress), cites his direct support for a limited number of earmarks, hits Palin again on the "Bridge to Nowhere" and ties her to the ethical problems within her state's Republican Party.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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2008 Elections Barack Obama John Mccain R-ariz. Sarah Palin