McCain's Kitchen Sink Strategy

McCain's Kitchen Sink Strategy
McCain NewsLadder

With less than three weeks to go in the run-up to the presidential election, the McCain campaign, with help from the Republican National Committee, continued to keep its focus on attempts to discredit the Democratic contender, Sen. Barack Obama, more than on the policy goals of G.O.P. standard-bearer Sen. John McCain -- or those of either man, for that matter.

In a week that featured RNC-sponsored robo-calls in battleground states alleging all manner of evil from the Democratic nominee, the McCain campaign, apparently with a little help from the Bush Justice Department, continued to demonize the non-profit, community-organizing group, ACORN, which conducts a large-scale voter registration program among low-income citizens.
During Wednesday night's debate, McCain sought to link Obama to ACORN, which he called a threat to "the fabric of our democracy."

Meanwhile, many issues of interest to major constituencies -- issues such as immigration, reproductive health and gender equity -- went largely unaddressed. But first, a little levity.

When last we left you, gentle reader, our friend Ezra Klein,
in summing up last Wednesday's final presidential debate, had all but dared some enterprising videohead to do just what our colleagues at The Minnesota Independent have done.

Here's Ezra:

Someone is going to create a vicious video of McCain's eye
roles, neck bulges, sighs, head tilts, death stares, and evident
moments of gastrointestinal distress.

Well, perhaps not so vicious; more of a loving tribute:
John
McCain, Man of a Thousand Faces

Okay; enough fun. Now let's take a look at these allegations against
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Among the many things that ACORN does (like organize the survivors of
Hurricane Katrina to rebuild their neighborhoods), it registers voters
from among the people it serves. It does this by hiring contract
workers, a few of whom rip off ACORN by just filling in registration
forms with fraudulent information. Many of these bad registrations
are even caught by ACORN and flagged for the public officials who will
evaluate them. (Some states require that once a registration form is
filled out under a group's aegis, it must be submitted to the state,
even if it contains errors.)

These bad registrations form the basis of a widespread campaign to tar
ACORN as an agent of voter fraud. Indeed, "ACORN" has become the
routine response to documented concerns about voter disenfranchisement
at the polls, as occurred in Ohio and elsewhere during presidential
election night in 2004.

At Mother Jones, Jonathan Stein writes of one pre-debate salvo in the McCain camp's war on
ACORN:

At a press conference at the National Press Club in
Washington, the McCain campaign put the chairmen of its "Honest and
Open Election Committee," former Republican Senators John Danforth and
Warren Rudman, front and center before the national media.

[...]

The Senators didn't quite accuse Barack Obama of orchestrating massive
voter fraud, but they came close.

The leadership of ACORN, Stein writes, requested a sit-down meeting
with Danforth and Rudman, who had, at press time, not taken up the
offer. Stein explains:

The McCain campaign has a political interest in declining
the invitation. After all, why would it put to bed a controversy that
has the ability to energize its base in the final weeks of the
election?

McCain himself declared that "voter fraud" could lose him the
battleground state of Florida. That's one way to have blame placed
and ready should he actually lose the state on the merits. (Don't
forget that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist seems quite disinterested in
campaigning for McCain, telling reporters that he would do so if he
has some extra time in his schedule.) Talking Points Memohas
the video of McCain's comments to a local Florida news station.

Last night came word of an F.B.I. investigation of ACORN's activities, an investigation in
which leader of the Obama campaign,according to Zachary Roth of TPM Muckraker, sees links to the U.S. Attorneys scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of former Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales. And so does David Iglesias, one of the U.S. Attorneys fired during Gonzales' tenure for refusing to pursue what he saw as baseless allegations against ACORN's voter registration drive in New Mexico.

All of this makes even more delicious the find by our friends at
Truthdig of a 2006
video of McCain addressing an ACORN-sponsored immigration rally in
Miami (what state is that again?), at which he lauded the event as
being what America is all about.

If the ACORN business doesn't fulfill your need for distasteful
campaign news, how 'bout the latest batch of robo-calls from the
Republican National Committee? Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central
has the
audio of a call recently blasted through landlines in North
Carolina, a once-safe Republican state that is now in play. A female
voice makes the long-ago-discredited accusation that Obama opposes
providing medical care to fetuses that survive botched abortions. The
call ends thusly:

Please vote -- vote for the candidates who share our
values. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican
National Committee at 202 863 8500.

Other McCain/RNC robo-calls, Sargent reports, include:

* One that questions Obama's patriotism by saying he put
"Hollywood above America" during the financial crisis.

* One that says that Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are"
and claims they merely "say" they want to keep us safe.

* One that attaches him to "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," whose
group "killed Americans."

McCain's apparent scorched-earth approach to campaigning led Sen.
Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.), McCain's colleague and co-sponsor of the
famous campaign-finance legislation to tell The Nation's John Nichols:

"It won't seem credible for the John McCain I know to say
his campaign should be respectful, while seeming to look the other way
as his campaign employs certain tactics and rhetoric which apparently
are intended to appeal to the fears of some Americans."

New America Media's Andrew Lam, author of Perfume Dreams, sees a
parable for McCain in Shakespeare's MacBeth:

In his desire to be king, Macbeth destroyed the kingdom
itself and brought chaos to the moral order. So obsessed is he with
his vision to be king, he compromised all that was good about him.

The parallels with senator McCain are striking. Descendant of Navy
admirals, and a war hero, his presidential campaign, unlike any in
recent memory, has gone over to the dark side by stoking the fire of
racism. With ads calling Senator Obama "Dangerous" and "dishonorable"
while Sarah Palin, his running mate, went on the offensive, with
phrases like, "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and
how I see America," and "palling around with terrorists," the once
veiled racism became overt. As Lady Macbeth, she is full of glee and
smiles as she goes about her task of character
assassination.

As his campaign has stoked the passions of fearful voters with such
attacks on Obama, McCain has been called to account for some of the
more unsavory characters that he and his running-mate, Sarah Palin,
have trafficked with. According to Max Blumenthal, blogging for The Nation, the McCain campaign "went into full damage control" when David Neiwert, Blumenthal's co-author on a Salon piece (we reported it in last week's column), appeared on "CNN Newsroom" to discuss Sarah Palin's associations with two Alaska secessionists, one who claimed to have enough weaponry in his basement "to raise an
army."

According to Blumenthal, the McCain campaign issued a statement during
Niewert's appearance that read, "CNN is furthering a smear with this
report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning
Senator Obama's religion." To which Blumental retorts:

By referring to Obama's "religion," the McCain-Palin
campaign, obviously attempted to provoke the most inflammatory charge
leveled against Obama's character: What religion is he? Is he a
crypto-Muslim?The McCain campaign also asserted an equivalency between
Obama's religion and Palin's political ties to a far right
group.

When McCain returned on Thursday to the "Late Show with David
Letterman", he probably didn't expect an easy time of it. But neither
did he likely expect to have to defend his association with and
embrace of G. Gordon Liddy, "the "mastermind behind the Watergate
burglary," according to Salon's Alex Koppelman, who recounts McCain's Letterman
appearance.

Indeed legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote that in 1998, Liddy, who Bernstein says, at one time planned "to firebomb a Washington think tank and assassinate
a prominent journalist", gave a fundraiser in his Arizona home for McCain's senatorial campaign, and that McCain lauded Liddy during a 2007 appearance on Liddy's radio show.

At the Washington Monthly's Political Animal, Steve Benen
highlighted the revelation by Murray Waas that "William Timmons,
the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his
presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against
his regime."

While many commentators have seen the tactics of the McCain campaign
as a reflection of its flagging poll numbers, one potential bright
spot appeared this week. Among Asian voters, a group that may prove
to be key in this election cycle, 34 percent remain undecided,
according the National Asian American Survey. While Obama clearly led
McCain, with 43 percent to McCain's 22, the high numbers of undecided
could swing McCain's way, according to Nguoi-Viet.com, via New
America Media.

Perhaps that large number of Asian undecideds has something to do with
absence of talk about issues that enthuse them. For instance, reports
Jonathan Adams of ColorLines' RaceWire, neither McCain
nor Obama has had much to say about immigration:

Because of the economy, neither candidate wants to be the
one to bring up the issue. Immigrants aren't coming to the United
States as quickly now--historically, this is typical during bad
economic times--but the next administration has to come up with a plan
to deal with the inevitability of immigration.

Women, too, aren't hearing much on their issues. Peggy Simpson of Women's Media Center reports that Lifetime TV is pursuing to the wire a live candidates' forum on issues important to
women. Apparently the McCain camp balked at one proposal because the leaders of several of the women's groups involved were pro-Obama:

Talks with the campaigns for a more extended forum on
women's issues have gone on since early July. CNN had been brought in
as a probable sponsor as well--and CNN then objected to the direct
sponsorship by the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO)
because some of its members had backed Obama.

NCWO's Kim Otis said only five of the 240 groups had endorsed Obama
but they did include some of the heavyweights such as the National
Organization for Women. And the candidates had both appeared at
African-American and Hispanic forums that included individuals who
backed Obama.

On the eve of Wednesday's debate, a person close to the
Lifetime-campaign talks said "they're still continuing."

In the meantime, AlterNet has done the service of putting togther a compare-and-contrast accounting of the candidates' positions on reproductive justice and gender issues. (Another AlterNet guide details "The 10 Biggest Differences Between Obama and McCain That Will Affect Your Daily
Life.")

While some predict that the rash of anti-gay-marriage ballot measures
afflicting the presidential campaign may play well for McCain, not
everybody agrees, reports Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson:

The tacit support for gays by prominent Republicans such
as [Florida governor Charlie] Crist and California governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger plus the recent defeat of anti-gay-marriage amendments
in Iowa and Indiana suggest that opposition to gay marriage may no
longer be a slam dunk for the GOP.

Speaking for another core constituency, veteran investigative
journalist James
Ridgeway cautions liberals against being too nasty about McCain's age. Writes Ridgeway:

Every year, despite their purported senility and
decrepitude, elderly people like myself somehow manage to hobble to
the polls with their canes and walkers, or zip down in their golf
carts or aging Cadillacs, and figure out which lever to pull or which
little box to fill in.

Another 17 days -- not that I'm counting, or anything.

--Adele M. Stan

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting
about John McCain. Visit JohnMcCain.NewsLadder.net
for a complete list of articles on McCain. And for the best
progressive reporting on two
critical issues, check out Immigration.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net.

JohnMcCain.NewsLadder.net
is a project of The Media
Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and
created by NewsLadder. Adele
M. Stan is executive editor of The Media Consortium's syndicated
reporting project.