Ask Republican John McCain about the nastiness of his campaign of late and the lies that he and his running mate continue to tell and his response involves some mixture of “Obama’s doing it, too”, “Obama will raise your taxes” and “This wouldn’t be happening if Obama would just do town hall meetings with me.” None of these, of course, justify, much less explain, his dive off the deep into into the abyss of the “Lie Your Ass Off Campaign.”
What’s making me smile is that the mainstream media is finally collecting their wits and calling him on this utter hooey. To be sure, some in the media continue to take the “equal time” road where they feel they need to balance anything negative they report about the McCain campaign with something negative about the Obama campaign. But more and more, there is a public acknowledgment that it simply isn’t balanced or equal. The lies being told by McCain on a daily basis outnumber anything untruthful coming from Obama and, most importantly, they are much more serious and substantial lies. Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post (or as Republican McCain would call it, “the Warshington Post”) has a searing indictment of the McCain campaign. It’s a “must read”, in my opinion. Here is a very notable excerpt:
Both candidates are guilty of playing trivial pursuit in a serious season, campaigning from gotcha to gotcha. Obama also has eagerly taken every cheap shot — McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years, doesn’t get the economy, can’t count his own houses. Neither candidate is running the honest, confront-the-hard-questions campaign he promised.
McCain’s transgressions, though, are of a different magnitude. His whoppers are bigger; there are more of them. He — the easy out would be to say “his campaign” — has been misleading, and at times has outright lied, about his opponent. He has misrepresented — that’s the charitable verb — his vice presidential nominee’s record. Called on these fouls, he has denied and repeated them.
The most outrageous of McCain’s distortions involve Obama on taxes. He asserts that Obama’s new taxes could “break your family budget,” and that an Obama presidency would inflict “painful tax increases on working American families.” Hardly. Obama would lower taxes for most households, and lower them more than McCain would. The only “painful tax increases on working American families” would be on working families making more than $250,000.
Likewise, the McCain campaign has its story about Sarah Palin, and it’s sticking with it — facts be damned. She said “thanks but no thanks” to that “Bridge to Nowhere,” except that she didn’t: She backed the bridge until it was unpopular, then scooped up the money and used it for other projects. More than a year after McCain began railing against the bridge, Palin, then a gubernatorial candidate, said the state should build it “now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”
Palin sold the gubernatorial jet, on eBay and for a profit — except that she didn’t. She didn’t take earmarks as governor — except for the $256 million she sought last year, and the $197 million wish list for 2008.
The only thing I would disagree with in this assessment is her contention that Palin said, “thanks but no thanks”. Palin said nothing of the sort. She has repeatedly, said (and this has been verified) “theenks but new theenks.” C’mon, Ruth, you’re a reporter. Get your damn facts straight, wouldjya?
Oh, and as an aside, did Sarah Palin actually use the word “impactful“??? Washington State University would not be pleased…
I’m just sayin’…
