Re: Obama's Visit With Wounded Troops - McCain Had Negative Ad In Case He Did!

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It looks like McCain, who promised a positive campaign about the issues, was ready to go negative on Obama even if he would have gone to visit the wounded soldiers in Germany! It's the classic case of "Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't!". http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2008/07/the_new_normal.html Here's an excerpt:What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie. Here's more, which only reinforces what I've been saying about Fox Noise and some of their on-air personalities all along:This is what some people are calling the Hannity strategy. Right wing nut-muffin Sean Hannity employs a slick strategy of repeating canards very quickly over and over, day in and day out, which aren’t challenged by his TV co-host Alan Colmes or by any of his radio listeners. By relentlessly repeating falsehoods day after day, the theory goes, it becomes embedded in the media. There is truth in this. In 2004, the Bush campaign ran an ad and daily repeated that John Kerry was a flip flopper, running a Kerry clip with the Democratic candidate saying he voted for an $87 billion military appropriation before he voted against it. It sounded bad when ripped out of context. Kerry voted for it in committee, and then voted against in on a floor vote when the bill included giveaways to Halliburton he didn’t support. The distortion took on a life of its own, parroted by mainstream media including Chris Matthews, and even the Tom Brokaw and the late Tim Russert. It is a case study in how effective advertising can work when it is done relentlessly and consistently…even if its untrue. Hannity employed the same strategy conflating a passing acquaintance between Obama and former unconvicted Weather Underground activist William Ayers with "an association" with Obama...for months. He talked it up every day. He finally goaded ABC's George Stephanopoulus to ask Obama about it in a televised debate. It didn't matter that Obama has nothing that could be construed by a thinking person like "an association" with Ayers. He raised the question just by repeating it daily. Welcome to the new McCain/Schmidt/Rove campaign. (End of excerpts) The Obama campaign gave a more than acceptable reason for his decision to cancel his visit with the wounded troops in Germany but that wasn't going to matter anyway. Just in case you hadn't heard or read it, here it is:His campaign was advised by the Pentagon that since Obama was on a campaign trip and spending campaign resources, it would be viewed as using the wounded as props whether cameras were allowed in the hospital or not. Obviously, that won't be "good enough" for some and won't be believed by others but there it is, for what it's worth. Regardless of your opinion about the visit that never happened, I'd hope you would at least admit this is pretty shady of McCain, especially for someone who likes to boast of being a "straight talker". Annie