Thread: In scurrilous tradition, dirt flies in South Carolina

In scurrilous tradition, dirt flies in South Carolina

The noxious cloud of dirty tricks that permeates politics in South Carolina is back in the air as John McCain and his Republican rivals face off in the 2008 White House race.
In 2000, when he last ran for the presidency, Senator McCain went down to one of the most notorious smear campaigns of US political history.

Ahead of South Carolina's closely fought Republican primary on Saturday, the Vietnam war veteran is once again the target of attacks from shadowy groups. This time, he is fighting back with a "Truth Squad."

"This is a pivotal election. I know that a lot of nasty things are going on. Ignore that kind of stuff, my friends," McCain told a rally in Columbia Thursday.

The Democrats are not immune, with Barack Obama besmirched in emails as a secret Islamic extremist bent on subverting the nation. The Illinois senator is a practicing Christian whose father was a non-observant Muslim from Kenya.


A coalition of Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League slammed the toxic emails, which have proliferated nationally and in South Carolina before its Democratic primary on January 26.

"These tactics attempt to drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate based on despicable and false attacks and innuendo based on religion," the groups said in an open letter to the Jewish community.

The Truth Squad mobilized for the first time this week, to denounce cartoon flyers from "Vietnam Veterans Against McCain" falsely accusing the Arizona senator of abandoning his fellow prisoners of war in Vietnam.

Thousands of South Carolinians have received "push-polling" telephone calls from another group, Common Sense Issues, that backs Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee but is not affiliated to the former Arkansas governor's campaign.

The calls ask voters to name their preferred candidate and, if the answer is not Huckabee, pose loaded polling questions that distort the records of his rivals including McCain, Mitt Romney and screen star Fred Thompson.


Huckabee has called the calls "offensive" but they are continuing in full spate.

Huckabee himself is the target of an emotive video made by "Victims' Voice." It features the mother of a woman who was raped and murdered by a criminal who had been paroled from an Arkansas jail when Huckabee was governor.

Former Massachusetts governor Romney, whose Mormon faith is distrusted by evangelicals, was meanwhile the victim of a fake Christmas card claiming to be from his family that carried unflattering passages from Mormon scripture.

For his South Carolina consultant, Romney hired Warren Tompkins, who has denied orchestrating some of the nastiest attacks against McCain in 2000.

Like Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's long-time counselor, Tompkins is a protege of the late Lee Atwater, a legendary Republican operative from South Carolina who perfected some of the darkest arts of modern US politics.


"Lee Atwater paved the way -- the road to victory is paved with the corpses of your opponents," said Scott Huffmon, political science professor at Winthrop University.

"A national spotlight has been shone upon us for this type of campaigning and dirty tricks, and yet it's continuing unabashed. It's one thing to be a role model, it's another thing to be that kind of role model," he said.

Possibly the ugliest negative campaign came eight years ago, when McCain headed into the South Carolina primary on a high after trouncing Bush in New Hampshire.

Anonymous anti-McCain messages alleged that he had fathered an illegitimate black child, that he was mentally deranged and that he was the "fag candidate" because of his purported sympathy for homosexuals.


The Bush campaign denied directing the attacks, which contributed to the derailing of McCain's presidential run in conservative, race-conscious South Carolina.

"It's still going to work with some people, but I think the South Carolina electorate is a little more wise to the techniques this time around," Huffmon said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1

Amazing how the press ignores Obama's church bestowing a "Lifetime Achievement Award" on Louis Farrakhan! While they have ripped Romney's Mormon religion, they have ignored the racist UCC and Pastor Wright who's anti-American, anti-white quotes could fill a book.