For anyone that wasn't paying attention to politics at the time, in the 2000 Republican primary, John McCain was running against George Bush. Bush won the Iowa caucus, then McCain, painting himself as the maverick candidate, won the New Hampshire Primary in a huge upset. This is the campaign when McCain got a lot of his popularity, when he started the Straight Talk Express. The thought at the time was if McCain could pull off a win in the South Carolina primary, he would have all the momentum, and likely defeat Bush. Bush's campaign had its own plans to stop McCain, and started robocall pushpolling asking people in SC if they'd vote for McCain if they knew he had an illegitimate black child with a New York prostitute. The child McCain had was a child Cindy had adopted from Bangladesh.
Understandably, after this crushing blow to his presidential aspirations, McCain became someone who protested against dirty, negative campaigning and against lying robocalls. He even spoke out agains the Swiftboat campaign leveled against John Kerry in '04.
This is why many Democrats and Independents had a lot of respect for John McCain. This is part of the reason I use to respect John McCain. And it is when considering all of these events, that the recent actions of his campaign become even more shocking & appalling.
McCain's campaign has started robocalls against Obama. The Swampland article by Joe Klein on the calls can be found here. The Huffington Post's story w/ audio of the call can be found here. The call starts out saying they're calling for John McCain & the RNC before cutting to the chase, saying that you "...need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."
First of all, there is no evidence that Obama ever worked closely with Bill Ayers, and according to everyone from Chicago that knows Obama, the relationship was extremely minimal. They served on a board together.
Furthermore, McCain himself fucking said in the debate LAST NIGHT that he "didn't care about some washed up terrorist," that he just cared about how this reflected on Obama's judgment. If he didn't care about trying to prove that Obama's a terrorist, his robocall wouldn't have detailed all of the actions done by the Weather Underground. Now I know that John McCain is not a reliable source for what John McCain and his campaign does and doesn't give a shit about, but this is absurd.
People have reported receiving these robocalls in a shitton of battleground states & red states that McCain might lose- Colorado, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The big surprises- Maine, a very blue state, and even bigger surprises- the two uber-red states of Texas & Georgia. Maine I can kind of understand, because they split up their electoral votes- 2 votes to the winner of the state overall, and 1 vote to the winner of each of Maine's 2 congressional district. McCain's hoping he can win 1 congresional district- with how far behind he is, this seems absurd to me.
But Texas and Georgia? Why the hell is he even bothering? Is there any chance he'll lose Texas or Georgia?
His calls in Minnesota are very, very likely illegal- Minnesota law requires that all robocalls be preceded by a human voice (which kind of eliminates the point of robocalls), and McCain's call was not preceded by a human voice. I couldn't find what the punishment for this offense was according to Minnesota law, but I doubt anything will happen to the McCain camp for the illegal robocalls. During the '06 midterm elections, there were enough RNC robocalls to people on the no-call list that the RNC could have been fined several millions. However, unsurprisingly, nothing happened.
I'm really disgusted by this whole turn of events. To me, this completes McCain's transformation, with this he went from Anakin to Vader, from some dude to a werewolf, from Captain America to a fucking douche bag. Considering McCain's past, and that dirty campaign tricks like this are what he has rallied against so much since the 2000 primary, this truly represents a new low for him. I'm fucking disgusted by it, and I have not even a shred of respect left for John McCain anymore. The respect I had for him has dropped faster than Rudy Giuliani's numbers in the GOP primary.
If you are disgusted enough by this to do something about it, you can contact the RNC at 202-863-8500. Maybe you can tell them what assholes they're being. Or tell them to fuck off.
And while you're at it, tell them what a fucking douche bag Tucker Bounds is.
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It may sicken you Joe, but it shouldn't be a surprise to you. McCain was really against Bush and the dirty campaigning of Rove in 2000 and even spoke of switching parties. But then he made up with Bush so he could be a speaker at the 2004 RNC and gain some popularity back with the Republican base, then took on Miss Conservative as a runningmate in another effort to do the same. I guess we'll soon see if his selling out pays off for him.
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