I suspect McCain will allow these things to happen and then denounce the ads/groups after a bunch of news programs run the ads to look at the "controversy" and the message gets out much more effectively than they could do by themselves. If he brings the hammer down on this crap, he's truly a maverick in the Republican Party and people who think he'll change when he gets to the WH have a bit more to stand on. However, I doubt he will do anything except shrug his shoulders and plead with the "private" groups to stop after the fact.
I suspect you're right...but unless you're suggesting McCain's planting these campaigns, I don't think you can fault him too much. How exactly can he bring the hammer down on this stuff? On the flip side...we'll see lots of blogs, commentary and other stuff on McCain flagging him as being an old cout, senile, womanizer, flip flopper, etc etc etc. Some of this stuff will be distorted, unfair and misleading. And Obama will likely denounce the most objectionable stuff. With the same effect.
He could take the reins of the party and try to change the culture of it as Obama did by telling the DNC they would no longer take money from lobbyists. I think he got a little too cute in NC when they ran those nasty ads there, he asked them to stop and then said he couldn't do anything about it. If he can't control his party as its titular leader, he's a weak candidate and a weak man. As for nasty smears circulating on blogs or whatever, I found a recent episode on kos interesting. Kos himself wrote a post about McCain's teeth and how brown they were. And the community jumped down his throat saying they didn't want to talk about stupid stuff like that and that it undercut the issues-based message of change our candidate is promoting. This stuff is much more control-able than McCain would have you believe. He's trying to have it both ways.
I believe it was Meet The Press that they were discussing this guy (I believe again) because they mentioned the Willie Horton guy was saying he's going to have some adds. I was expecting something better. Yawn
So what does it say about Obama when more than half of democratic primary voters voted against him? As titular leader, that must mean he's a weak candidate and a weak man. TITULAR FAILURE
another brilliant analogy, because obama should control voters, but if he did control voters, then you would say he was a thug of a candidate controlling voters. yawn
McCain already denounced that North Carolina GOP ad that showed Rev. Wright saying "******* America!". So give him some credit(although ironically I saw nothing wrong with that particular ad). And if you think 527s for both sides won't be trashing the opposing candidate, you're kidding yourself. The media loves to reference the Swift Boat Veterans like they were the only group to run an ad in 2004, while conveniently forgetting all the ads from Soros-funded groups comparing Bush to Hitler. The sad thing in all of this is the 527s are a direct result of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. So McCain will have no one to blame but himself when the Dem surrogates start piling on him in TV ads.
Too bad more than half the GOP primary voters voted against McCain too - and he ran unopposed for half those contests!
Off topic a bit...but what's sort of surreal about these smears is that I can't quite figure out if I should distrust Obama because he's a (gasp) Muslim...or because he was shares the views of his spirual advisor, that goofy Christian minister? Shouldn't these smears cancel eachother out?
obama is a half white not black enough angry black christian who's secretly a muslim what's hard to figure out? edit: and why cant that muslim keep his wife quiet, shouldn't she be walking behind him? please do not take this seriously as it is supposed to be sarcasm
You mean kind of like Obama denounces somebody after something inflammatory they said gets aired on national TV and a ****storm arises? You act as though McCain has a monopoly on this or something. ...until November...then it's back to business as usual. Riiiiight...that's why we have a billion websites dedicated to how old McCain is. To say that McCain can control what is said about him on the internet is to subconsciously see reality in a way that makes us feel like the deck is stacked against us so it is even sweeter if we win. As long as there are well monied people supporting a candidate, the opponent will get covered in crap in TV ads.
A monopoly? no, of course not. It's just after the "Swift Boat Veterans", various Clinton-era bogeymen, Willie Horton, Ronald Reagan's fictitious cadilllac-driving welfare queens - one is hard pressed to come up with an equally prevalent analogue.
Yes the Fox News people, sorry if the wrongness of calling a potential first lady a "baby momma" didn't jump right out at you.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=3725328&postcount=37 So, you're willing to give McCain the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that he'll turn into Maverick McCain once he gets in the White House, but you're also willing to suspect the worst of Obama should he reach the WH. Got it. There's only one that I know of... and it's done in a tongue-in-cheek style while pointing out cool things about our history. And the issue is not what's said about McCain on the Internet by anybody, but allowing Repub operatives who are under the control of the GOP to engage in systematic, coordinated personal attacks and rumor mongering. (See the above linked post.) That's true to a degree. But I hope you would agree calling a candidate for President a Muslim terrorist Manchurian candidate who wants to destroy America is a bit over the top.
