The smear campaign state
The smear campaign state
Scripps Howard News Service: Perhaps it was because consultant Lee Atwater, a master of smear tactics and dirty tricks, came of age in South Carolina. Atwater later repented his tactics and before his death in 1991 apologized to his victims. Nonetheless, the state is saddled with an enduring reputation for mudslinging politics.
The state’s nadir was in 2000 when a series of vicious attacks on John McCain, for which the Arizona senator was unprepared and unable to effectively rebut, effectively ended his presidential campaign.
“Push polls, “ in which callers pretending to be pollsters spread scurrilous charges, accused McCain of being mentally unstable from his years as a POW, having fathered a black child (he has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh) and of being married to a drug addict.
Fresh mud flying
In 2008, the mud is flying again in the Palmetto State.
The old slurs against McCain are being revived with an additional charge that he sold out his fellow POWs to the North Vietnamese and an automated phone campaign misrepresenting his record on abortion.
This time McCain has learned the lesson that John Kerry failed to learn in 2004 when a smear campaign against him gave the political lexicon the term “swift boating.” The lesson is to hit back fast and hit back hard which McCain is doing with “truth squads” of respected local figures.
McCain is not alone. Barack Obama has seen a revival of the whispering campaign that he attended a radical Islamic school and that he is a closet Muslim. Phony Christmas cards purporting to be from Mitt Romney endorsed polygamy and made an edgy reference to the Virgin Mary. A Web site accused Fred Thompson of being a “pro-choice skirt chaser.” And Mike Huckabee imported Arkansas businessmen to rebut charges against him made by an anti-tax group.