McCain Lets Bush & Co. Demonize Obama

In 2000 George W. Bush decided he ought to run for POTUS. He had good reason. God wanted him to be president. W. had no qualms at all about announcing the Almighty's endorsement (or the anointing, if you will) publicly. America needed to know what God intended and George W. was kind enough to tell us. After all, when you're one of the true Born Again elite, you know what God's thinking. You know exactly what He wants.

Whatever God might have been thinking, whatever it was He wanted, He failed to deliver New Hampshire into the hands of His chosen candidate. Senator John McCain, without divine support, won that primary and W. was furious. Clearly, running as the Lord's favorite compassionate conservative was not going to be enough to win the White House.

The South Carolina primary loomed and McCain--the 2000 version of the Agent of Change--had the Big Mo. Another Bush loss spelled the end of his crusade for the Oval Office. George W. needed a miracle. Fast. Vietnam war hero John Sidney McCain was targeted for virtual annihilation. If he couldn't be beaten on the issues, he had to be destroyed. The Karl Rove/Tucker Eskew version of Intelligent Campaign Design? Lying for the Lord in the Palmetto State. And this version of God's will was very personal.

We South Carolinians had a front row seat in the coliseum when the GOP lions were loosed on an unarmed McCain. Poisonous push-polling, conceived and implemented under the tutelage of Bush campaign architect Rove and his South Carolina communications director Eskew, it swept the state like forty days and nights of foul weather.

"Would you still vote for John McCain if you knew...he has fathered an illegitimate black baby...he is a liar and a cheat...his wife is a drug addict..."

They were all lies. They were bald-faced lies told purposely with no intent other than the demonization of a man's character and his candidacy. Bush & Co. lied shamelessly. They sinned, ignoring the Word of God, breaking the ninth commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Bush was certain the smear attack, false or not, was justified. Horrific lies, told in the name of God, were surely acceptable in His sight.

Biblical scholars, Christian leaders, should have risen up, en masse, in protest . There is no Biblical "pass" for the liar who harms another child of God.

They didn't object. The sin was sanctified by the Religious Right. With the full support of Falwell, Reed, Robertson, et al, Lying for the Lord as a political tactic worked. McCain not only lost the South Carolina primary, he lost all hope for the Republican nomination. McCain, the candidate, was not only bloodied, he was mortally wounded. And he was bitter about it.

He had every right to be. John McCain, after bitter personal experience, promised us a loftier campaign for the presidency. An honorable one.

Now, eight long years and a 2004 campaign of lies (again embraced by the Religious Right) later, John McCain has evolved. He's a new creation. He's thrown his arms around Bush, Falwell, Hagee, Parsley, Dobson and Karl Rove. He's recruited Tucker Eskew, who so skillfully demonized McCain in South Carolina, to teach vice presidential hopeful Palin the ropes. He knows, first hand, what the Rove/Eskew ropes are intended to be. A noose. On the issues, with his fawning support of the dismal Bush Doctrine surrounding his candidacy like a plague of locusts, John the Maverick will lose. Again. If Camp McCain has its way this won't be an issue driven campaign; it will be a lynching.

The lies are out there: Obama doesn't love his country. Obama isn't a real Christian. Obama will hand the United States over to the Muslims; he's the Manchurian Candidate. Obama wants to lose a war to win an election. Obama wants to coddle terrorists. Obama wants to kill babies--even when they're born alive. Obama will raise your taxes. Obama is responsible for $4-a-gallon gasoline. Obama wants to corrupt kindergarten kids with federally sanctioned pornography. Obama hates rural Americans and poor people. Obama is not like us. Obama isn't as brave as McCain, as honorable as McCain. Obama isn't as experienced as McCain's choice for Veep. Obama's wife hates America. Obama and his wife are uppity; they're elitists. An Obama presidency is "more of the same".

Obama is a sexist who called Sarah Palin a pig.

If you're a good, right-minded Christian, you know God doesn't want this heathen in the White House.

They're lies. They're lies. They're more of the same shameless lies.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness..."

From Mosaic law: "Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other person."

From the Sermon on the Mount: "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."

Heaven help us. John McCain has adopted the vicious, dishonest Campaign 2000 South Carolina Smear Syndrome and gone national with it. Like George W. Bush, he's corrupting faith and deeply held moral values for the sake of winning. He's corrupting scripture.

John McCain is trying to do unto Barack Obama what George W. Bush did unto him.

And that's a sin.

Comments

[MiddleRoadLiberal]

The entire media is calling McCain out. Every independent and even some conservative sources are calling his lies. You know what McCain supporters and even undecideds are saying? "Calling Republicans liars all the time is what liberals do. The media is behind Barack Obama, so it's no surprise that they're calling McCain a liar too." And that's how you win elections.

[vincealy]

Some media attention should be focused on the slime that runs McCain's campaign. As fot r the article . Amen

[AspenFreePress]

Where is Dubya, anyway? He skipped his party's national convention to stay in Texas ostensibly to be near a hurricane -- Gustav -- so he could be on hand to better expedite assistance to storm victims. Well Gustav came and went and so did Bush, apparently. But there's another hurricane now -- a huge one named Ike -- headed lickety split toward Houston and Galveston, among other places, and no Bush. I figured he'd be in Texas again now to offer shelter to the tens of thousands of evacuees at his ranch in Crawford.
Sterling Greenwood
Aspen Free Press

[littlequeenie]

One thing that AMAZES me is that after Bush and Rove smeared McCain in 2000, he has turned around and embraced them; the so-called Maverick with HONOR stood next to Bush when he endorsed him for president earlier this year. I know politics makes for strange bedfellows but this shows no self-respect or ruthless ambition or both.

Now McCain uses these same tactics against Obama, but talks about the dirty tactics Obama uses. Obama has NOT played dirty at all.

Excellent piece again, Linda.

[douglasdjohnson]

I would like to comment on just one point: In 2001-2003, Obama did indeed lead the opposition to, and ultimately killed, simple (three-sentence) legislation to provide protection for babies who are born alive during abortions -- and he has been making demonstrably false claims about the bill ever since, which have been throughly rebutted in an extensively documented White Paper released by National Right to Life on August 28, 2008, here: http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html

The bill was virtually identical to a bill that passed Congress without a single dissenting vote in 2002. When we released recently uncovered documents to prove this, Obama said that we were "lying." After an investigation, Annenberg's independent FactCheck.org concluded: "Obama's claim is wrong . . . The documents from NRLC support the group's claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of SB 1082 [the 2003 Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act]."

In Obama’s view, to declare the fully born and living but "previable" human is a legal person conflicts with the proper application of "Roe v. Wade." Thus, in Obama's view, even a live birth is not enough to confer "human rights," in the abortion context at least. If not then, when? Obama can't say. When Pastor Rick Warren asked "at what point does a baby get human rights?", Obama answered that the questions was "above my pay grade."

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)
legfederal // at // aol.com
http://www.nrlc.org

[BeninTN]

Mr. Johnson, you might remember that Eric Zorn has addressed this concern at length in his fine blog on the Chicago Tribune website. Frankly, I find your statements misleading at best and false at worst.

Sen. Obama, as a state Senator, recognized that there were already existing laws on the books that protected babies born alive. He recognized, as I do (and I'm an Evangelical Christian), that the attempt to pass the BAIPA law in 2002 was a "gotcha" - and frankly, you ought to know that by now.

I support the right to life as strongly as anyone, but I do not believe that under the US Constitution there is any legal or ethical means by which we can demand that a particular religious viewpoint on abortion be made the law of the land.

Senator Obama addressed that at length in his "Call to Renewal" speech in June of 2006, where he discussed the role of religion in politics.

Please cease and desist from posting misleading information on the internet, Mr. Johnson. I expected better of you.

[douglasdjohnson]

Mr. Vos,

A lot of blustery indignation and irrelevancies but not much substance in your reply. Let me try to distill the substance and then correct your misinformation.

At the time that he opposed the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, Obama did not say he opposed it because he thought that an existing law already covered all humans born alive during abortions. On the contrary, he said he opposed it because it would violate his concept of Roe v. Wade to recognize a "previable fetus" (his term), born alive during an abortion, as enjoying legal protection. Recently, once Obama's previous cover-up story was exploded by NRLC, FactCheck.org, et al, he seized on this new claim that an existing law protected the babies. But, it is not true. The law to which he (and you) refer only applies when an abortionist declares in advance that the target of the abortion has "a reasonable likelihood of SUSTAINED SURVIVAL" after birth. This law has no bearing at all on many of the babies who were born alive during induced-labor abortions. For example, one nurse testified one such baby lived through an eight-hour shift. Was that baby a human being protected by law, as the bill said, or just a "previable fetus" covered by Roe v. Wade, as Obama said? Again, the full bill of particulars, with links to primary documents, is here: http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html

Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director, National Right to Life

[BeninTN]

And ironically, the very same FactCheck article that you quote says, "What we can say is that many other people – perhaps most – think of "infanticide" as the killing of an infant that would otherwise live. And there are already laws in Illinois, which Obama has said he supports, that protect these children even when they are born as the result of an abortion. Illinois compiled statute 720 ILCS 510/6 states that physicians performing abortions when the fetus is viable must use the procedure most likely to preserve the fetus' life; must be attended by another physician who can care for a born-alive infant; and must "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion." Failure to do any of the above is considered a felony. NRLC calls this law "loophole-ridden."" - So, according to your very own FactCheck, the law in Illinois already contains a protection.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html

[vincealy]

Amen!

[ButterflyWeed]

Off the Bus at its best. A wake-up call to all voters getting the same hit 'n run tactics.