Democrats are getting apoplectic about this year's flat-out lies by Republicans in their candidates' statements and TV commercials, with Obama supporters' fact-checking falling hopelessly behind the opposition output.
On his Washington Post blog, Michael Kinsley notes that "the routine acceptance of obvious lies now corrodes our politics as much as the money that was the subject of McCain’s famous act of Republican apostasy: McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
"McCain has described his motive for McCain-Feingold as a giant mea culpa for his involvement in the Keating Five scandal. Maybe when this is over, one way or another, McCain will swear off corrupt lying the way he has sworn off corrupt money."
Fat chance. FactCheck.org is as busy as Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerer's Apprentice in the Disney classic, trying to sweep up the misstatements, half-truths and whoppers flooding the national consciousness from the Karl Rove-trained McCain minions.
It all brings back my first experience with official lies as a reporter for the college newspaper. In an interview, a dean kept telling me things I knew weren't true, that he knew I knew weren't true but that he kept saying with a straight face.
In time, the dean went into his natural calling, politics, to become Deputy Mayor of New York but eventually had to resign in disgrace for misusing taxpayer money for personal purposes.
The happy ending to that story may have misled me into believing that liars are always eventually caught out, but this campaign is creating severe doubts.
Will McCain be able to do to Obama this year what Bush and Rove did to him in 2000? If he succeeds, we'll have to stop reading our children and grandchildren the Pinocchio story.
Showing posts with label 2000 primaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2000 primaries. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Friday, February 01, 2008
The Near-Defection of John McCain
George W. Bush and Karl Rove apparently accomplished something the North Vietnamese in five years of captivity could not do--get John McCain to consider switching loyalties.
The story surfaces, just before Super Tuesday, in The Hill today, of McCain's temptation to leave the Republican Party after being savagely smeared by the Bush campaign in the 2000 primaries.
In persuasive detail, it reports the approach of a McCain aide to Congressional Democratic leaders about the possibility of the Arizona Senator emulating Vermont's Jim Jeffords in becoming an Independent and aligning himself with their party.
McCain's disaffection in 2001 was no secret. Fellow Republican Trent Lott criticized him publicly then for keeping "unusual company."
But why does the story surface now? The cui bono is obvious as Mitt Romney tries to persuade Republicans that he is the party's legitimate standard bearer, and Ann Coulter reflects the weird vote by announcing she would back Hillary Clinton before McCain.
There must be déjà vu in all this for the Republican front runner. The rabid Right hated him back then, still does and will stop at nothing to derail him. But Romney, Coulter, Rush Limbaugh et al are no Karl Roves in the art of demonizing those they oppose.
When McCain gets the nomination, rational Republicans and Independents may be drawn to him by what these attacks reveal about his character.
The story surfaces, just before Super Tuesday, in The Hill today, of McCain's temptation to leave the Republican Party after being savagely smeared by the Bush campaign in the 2000 primaries.
In persuasive detail, it reports the approach of a McCain aide to Congressional Democratic leaders about the possibility of the Arizona Senator emulating Vermont's Jim Jeffords in becoming an Independent and aligning himself with their party.
McCain's disaffection in 2001 was no secret. Fellow Republican Trent Lott criticized him publicly then for keeping "unusual company."
But why does the story surface now? The cui bono is obvious as Mitt Romney tries to persuade Republicans that he is the party's legitimate standard bearer, and Ann Coulter reflects the weird vote by announcing she would back Hillary Clinton before McCain.
There must be déjà vu in all this for the Republican front runner. The rabid Right hated him back then, still does and will stop at nothing to derail him. But Romney, Coulter, Rush Limbaugh et al are no Karl Roves in the art of demonizing those they oppose.
When McCain gets the nomination, rational Republicans and Independents may be drawn to him by what these attacks reveal about his character.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Rove's Mugging of the McCains
As John McCain’s candidacy fades, it’s saddening to see the decline of an honorable man whose chances for the presidency in 2000 were destroyed by the Bush slime machine that has been defacing all of America ever since.
Yesterday was particularly poignant. Here was McCain in what was once his boyhood home, a block from the Capitol, now a lobbyists’ club, with his begging bowl out to take contributions from the people his campaign-finance reforms were intended to get out of Presidential politics.
Back in Phoenix his wife, Cindy, was giving a rueful interview to the New York Times. “I’m angry at them,” she said, ostensibly about the Bush Administration’s mishandling of the war in Iraq, where one of her sons is about to be deployed.
But under the veneer of a tactful political wife, there was more. In the 2000 campaign, after McCain defeated Bush in the New Hampshire primary, Karl Rove and his merry men destroyed her husband in South Carolina with slanders and push polls about everything from her one-time addiction to pain killers to rumors that their adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a black child McCain had fathered.
Last year, Bridget, who is now 15, learned about that while doing a Google search of her name and went to her mother in tears.
“She wanted to know why President Bush hated her,” Mrs. McCain said. “And I had to explain to her...how nasty campaigns can be.”
Now McCain, who withstood years in a Vietnamese prison camp only to be shut out of the White House by ruthless political thugs who had never heard a shot fired in anger, is fading into history. Those of us who differ with him about Iraq and regret his futile catch-up attempts to win over the Radical Right can nonetheless find him more admirable than the poseurs and phonies still standing in the Republican race.
The only hope for eventual justice to McCain’s memory is that the evil men do, in the case of Karl Rove, lives on and will come to light in the investigations that can’t remain mired forever in squabbles over subpoenas and executive privilege.
McCain won’t ever inhabit the White House, but his Congressional colleagues may yet fumigate it of the termites who kept him from getting there.
Yesterday was particularly poignant. Here was McCain in what was once his boyhood home, a block from the Capitol, now a lobbyists’ club, with his begging bowl out to take contributions from the people his campaign-finance reforms were intended to get out of Presidential politics.
Back in Phoenix his wife, Cindy, was giving a rueful interview to the New York Times. “I’m angry at them,” she said, ostensibly about the Bush Administration’s mishandling of the war in Iraq, where one of her sons is about to be deployed.
But under the veneer of a tactful political wife, there was more. In the 2000 campaign, after McCain defeated Bush in the New Hampshire primary, Karl Rove and his merry men destroyed her husband in South Carolina with slanders and push polls about everything from her one-time addiction to pain killers to rumors that their adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a black child McCain had fathered.
Last year, Bridget, who is now 15, learned about that while doing a Google search of her name and went to her mother in tears.
“She wanted to know why President Bush hated her,” Mrs. McCain said. “And I had to explain to her...how nasty campaigns can be.”
Now McCain, who withstood years in a Vietnamese prison camp only to be shut out of the White House by ruthless political thugs who had never heard a shot fired in anger, is fading into history. Those of us who differ with him about Iraq and regret his futile catch-up attempts to win over the Radical Right can nonetheless find him more admirable than the poseurs and phonies still standing in the Republican race.
The only hope for eventual justice to McCain’s memory is that the evil men do, in the case of Karl Rove, lives on and will come to light in the investigations that can’t remain mired forever in squabbles over subpoenas and executive privilege.
McCain won’t ever inhabit the White House, but his Congressional colleagues may yet fumigate it of the termites who kept him from getting there.
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