by Damozel | I discussed earlier the McCain campaign's increasing resort to what appear to be outright lies, as well as what I'll call factual distortions. Here's a further instance. Taking FactCheck.Org earlier statements debunking rumors about Gov. Palin circulating on the internet, McCain made it the basis of an ad which distorts FactCheck's findings by claiming that FactCheck.org found that the Obama campaign had made false and misleading statements concerning Governor Palin. Yeah, that's quite a big difference.
FactCheck.org isn't happy and has rebutted McCain's "approved" statements:
We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign. The McCain-Palin ad also twists a quote from a Wall Street Journal columnist. He said the Obama camp had sent a team to Alaska to "dig into her record and background." The ad quotes the WSJ as saying the team was sent to "dig dirt." ...
With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest. The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said "completely false" attacks on Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin.....
Our article, posted two days earlier, debunked a number of false or misleading claims that have circulated in chain e-mails and Internet postings regarding Palin. There is no evidence that the Obama campaign is behind any of the wild accusations that we critiqued. There is no more basis for attributing these viral attacks to the Obama campaign than there is for blaming the McCain campaign for chain e-mail attacks falsely claiming that Obama is a Muslim, or a "racist," or that he is proposing to tax water. The anti-Palin messages, like the anti-Obama messages, have every appearance of being home-grown. (FactCheck.org; emphasis added)
They also address other false claims in the ad. (FactCheck.org)
Threat Level notes:
Factcheck.org wasn't the only group complaining about the McCain team's integrity Wednesday. Ben Smith at The Politico reports that CBS asked YouTube to take down a McCain web ad that used a clip of evening news anchor Katie Couric saying "One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life." The clip came from a comment that Couric made in reference to Hillary Clinton, but this ad was about Palin.
A McCain representative could not be reached for comment at the time of this posting.
Ron Chusid points out a bit about the McCain camp's history with FactCheck:
Factcheck.org has had numerous articles criticizing John McCain’s dishonest ads, and has also defended McCain and Palin at times. Today we have the strange situation where they have issued a new post criticizing McCain for running a dishonest ad which distorts findings from Factcheck.org....
The McCain campaign had an opportunity in which they could have been honest by citing the Factcheck article to debunk some of the untrue claims about Palin. Instead they overplayed their hand, and displayed their dishonesty, in misrepresenting what Factcheck said and attempting to turn it into an attack on Obama. (Liberal Values)
Andrew Romano at Newsweek says:
[H]ere's what I don't understand: if the purpose of your truth squad is to spread the truth about Palin, why kick off your campaign with an ad that's full of falsehoods?...(Stumper)
Oh, Andrew Romano. I think you do understand... just as well as the rest of us. Yes...yes, you do.
It's clear what Team McCain is trying to achieve here. They want to portray Palin as the poor little victim of a looming Obama-media industrial complex that's "out to get her" just because she's a woman. They want to insulate their veep pick from any real opposition by equating valid journalistic inquiries and good hard politicking with the sort of anonymous smears that have spread online. They want to gin up sympathy for her among female swing voters who have faced improbable odds in their own lives. And they want Chris Matthews and Co. to deliver their message free of charge tonight on TV.
They'll probably succeed on all counts. But that doesn't mean that "truth" has anything to do with it. (Stumper)
So now what? What will McCain's campaign do about it? John Riley thinks the answer is "Nothing." After watching them at work, so do I.
[I]n the normal world, when you get something wrong, you correct it. So, McCain should probably retract the ad. But he won't, because the people who run modern political campaigns actually believe that, unlike everyone else, it's OK for them to lie. They're savvy political operatives! The misstatements are not mistakes -- they're on purpose. So, it's absurd to expect a retraction. (Spin Cycle)
You know, there are some Dems who want Obama to respond in kind but....nope, that's lower than I'm willing for my candidate to sink. That's not to say I don't want the campaign to call out McCain---and that right sharply---as soon as possible, but I don't want the lies and distortions.
Of course, the difference is, lies and distortions are all McCain's got----well, that and any pity he can stir up for his pit bull in lipstick.
Obama's got truth on his side. Just TELL IT, Obama campaign. Tell it and keep on telling it.
AMERICAblog asks the question I want answered, i.e., when we can expect the media to start asking him "what all these lies say about John McCain, the man he's become, the loss of his maverick image, has McCain reached a point of utter desperation, has Karl Rove totally taken over McCain's campaign, and is McCain any longer in charge of his campaign? We've all known John McCain for decades. So who is this guy running for president in his name?"
Mark Kleiman at The RBC wonders if McCain has finally "gone a bridge too far." "By continuing to repeat the Bridge to Nowhere lie and adding to it the "Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex" lie, the "Obama called Palin a pig" lie, and the false sourcing of the charges in McCain's TV spots," Kleiman says hopefully, "McCain has been spitting in the face of the press corps. There's evidence that the press corps is starting to fight back. Even Mark Halperin," Kleiman adds.
Truthdig suggests, "It’s time to start using the L-word when referring to John McCain and his campaign for the presidency. Misleading doesn’t quite capture the hypocritical use of distortions to make your opponent appear dishonest, as McCain’s latest ad attempts."
Memeorandum has more blogger discussion.
Never thought it would happen, but we are there:
"Susan of Texas" Perfects the Analogy
Bush's Legacy Embraced by McCain: A Party For Which the End Justifies the Lies
What If All the King's Horses and All the King's Men/Can't Put McCain's Honor Together Again?
Lipstick on a Pig versus Wrestling One
Sarah Palin: Still Telling the $320 Million Whopper About the Bridge to Nowhere?
It seems a simple strategy: put out more lies than your opponent has time to refute. Then, when the media does the refuting, blame the media for a left-wing slant.
Posted by: James | September 11, 2008 at 09:50 AM