McCain was against robocalls before he was for them
By ClarusVisum
@ClarusVisum (2163)
United States
October 18, 2008 9:52am CST
2000 - McCain says robocalls are "hate calls" that he was "inundated" with (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/flashback_mccain_condemned_rob.php )
Jan. 2008 - "Mr. McCain described the calls against him as “scurrilous stuff,’’ and his campaign set up a truth squad to debunk them." (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/mccain-robo-calls-critical-of-obama/ )
Oct. 2008 - "...the McCain campaign is using similar calls as it seeks to discredit Mr. Obama in a series of battleground states." (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/mccain-robo-calls-critical-of-obama/ )
Oh, and the firm that's doing the robocalls? EXACTLY the same one that attacked McCain with them in 2000. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/report-mccain-using-same_n_135699.html )
Yet another example of McCain using the same kind of dirty campaigning tactics he railed against when on the receiving end of them. This is what happens when you HIRE and PAY the same people Bush used to beat you in the 2000 primaries, Senator. You have no one to blame but yourself for your hypocrisy.
4 people like this
4 responses
@ZephyrSun (7381)
• United States
18 Oct 08
I remember reading how upset the campaign workers with the 2000 election were upset that McCain had hired the man that past along all the rumors of McCain during that time. It's just another flip flop (business as usual) for McCain.
4 people like this
@chameleonsdream (1230)
• United States
18 Oct 08
Am I the only one who has the sense that McCain is being run by his campaign rather than the other way around? If this is the way that he leads - with smears, innuendos, deliberate misstatements and outright lies - I don't want any part of it. If he doesn't know about the 'underground campaign', I don't want him in the White House. If he knows and is letting it go on against his own honor and ethics, I don't want him. If he can't lead a campaign, how can I trust him to lead the country?
3 people like this
@ClarusVisum (2163)
• United States
18 Oct 08
It's a common 'excuse' for his campaign's tactics, but the moment I read that he hired Askew to work for him, that went out the window. He's not so much 'controlled' by his campaign as he has sold out to Rove's acolytes. As you can see from the original post, he hires and pays the same people who smeared the crap out of him in 2000, to do it to someone else in 2008.
That shows a lack of decency, and a lack of empathy that he has no excuse for.
2 people like this
@anniepa (27955)
• United States
19 Oct 08
If I'd had any respect at all left for McCain by now it would be totally gone after this! Chris Matthews played the phone call tape several times last night and he feels the same way about it that we do. It would be frightening to someone who hasn't been paying attention to the campaign. There is no way to defend this kind of tactic, I don't care what any of our friends from the right say, and it's no excuse whatsoever that McCain himself didn't choose to do this. The voice on the phone clearly says it's from Senator John McCain and the RNC, how much clearer can you get. If by some horrible luck he ends up in the White House, what is he going to do, put someone else in charge of things like declaring war, as in "Bomb, Bomb Iran" and then claiming he didn't like it or agree with it?
Annie
2 people like this
@anniepa (27955)
• United States
21 Oct 08
"Very telling in my eyes - that moment on David Letterman when he started to deny that Sarah Palin had ever said Obama pals around with terrorists, then caught himself."
You know what, I was going to bring that up too. I thought when I saw the show for the first time that he just about slipped and automatically lied, but caught himself because I guess for once it registered in his brain that Dave could produce the tape of her saying that in a second. I've seen that same clip several times since then but nobody in the media have said a thing about him almost lying.
Annie
@chameleonsdream (1230)
• United States
19 Oct 08
There's such a thing as lying by omission and implication, and that tape does exactly that. And frankly, the fact that McCain routinely operates in such a way that he can claim both sides of almost any issue is one of the the major reasons that I decided on Obama in the first place. McCain openly supports veteran's issues, but given a choice of voting for a bill that fully funds their needs or one that partly funds them, he votes to give them less money. He voted for the bailout, then urged Bush - who was openly and desperately pushing the bill - to veto it. He voted time and again for deregulation, but claims that he was one of the first voices calling for closer regulation of Fannie Mae (far from the first, and having nothing to do with subprime mortgages). He claims to be against lobbying and for reform, yet his entire campaign staff is made up of lobbyists and former lobbyists. He hired the guy that organized the smear campaign against him to run this smear campaign - he has no plausible deniability over anything but "I never heard the specific tapes in question."
Very telling in my eyes - that moment on David Letterman when he started to deny that Sarah Palin had ever said Obama pals around with terrorists, then caught himself.
2 people like this
@shoffman2000 (560)
• Alexandria, Virginia
18 Oct 08
Now we all need to focus on voting
2 people like this
@ClarusVisum (2163)
• United States
18 Oct 08
Absolutely. Vote early (if you can vote early IN PERSON) if it is humanly possible.
3 people like this
