South Carolina Nastiness

It's unquestionably true that the same South Carolina dirty tricksters who stopped John McCain's Presidential bid in 2000 are out this year. The latest revelation is that Mike Huckabee's army of robo-callers and push-pollers are spreading that McCain supports experiments on unborn children. Actually, Huckabee's outfit is push-polling all his Republican rivals in the state. There is one charge specific to McCain, however: a mailer from a group called "Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. It's pretty weak stuff, accusing McCain of collaborating with his captors. Only thing is, the mailer wasn't mailed anywhere.

Recently, the group sent a mailer to approximately 80 newspaper editors in South Carolina accusing McCain of selling out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign (which is working hard to appeal to vet voters) made one of McCain's former fellow POWs available to the media to respond to the smear. The story, picked up by the AP and Wall Street Journal among others, got national play -- undoubtedly more play than the group would have been able to get on its own.

I spoke to the founder of Vietnam Veterans against John McCain, Jerry Kiley, yesterday. He told me that the group hasn't "actively sought donations at this point," and that the next step for the group will be mailings "going out to our network," with the intention that the mailing would then be forwarded on to local media there. The group just doesn't have the funds to send mailings directly to voters -- nor, as they declared they would in their statement of purpose, to run radio and TV ads. Things "could change," he told me, "if we received a sizable donation," but he wasn't holding out much hope.

Instead, they're planning "an email campaign." Groups of like-minded vets throughout the country will get the email chain started, he said, "so it will spread very quickly throughout the country."

So, this is an unfunded group trying to get some media attention. The McCain campaign went nuclear on it, to "prove" that groups are out to get him in South Carolina. I have to say that this is NOTHING compared to what Rove and the boys did to McCain in South Carolina last time. That was an establishment attack. These are a few guys with a flyer and some time on their hands. The question is, does McCain run the risk of over-publicizing this smear to the extent of it actually rebounding back on him?

Learning At The Foot Of The Master?

In 2000, John McCain was bedeviled in South Carolina with push-polling featuring all kinds of nasty whispers. McCain claims he's not responsible for a repeat of that this year in New Hampshire against Mitt Romney, but how can you be sure this isn't just learned behavior?

New Hampshire's attorney general is investigating phone calls to voters that pretend to be opinion polls but then undercut presidential contender Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith — and make favorable statements about Republican rival John McCain. McCain says they're not his doing and he wants them stopped. Romney says it's a religious attack and "un-American."

McCain said of the phone calling, "It is disgraceful, it is outrageous, and it is a violation, we believe, of New Hampshire law." His campaign asked the attorney general to investigate, and McCain, campaigning Friday in Colorado, asked other candidates to join in the request.

One McCain adviser, Chuck Douglas, said "we believe it is being done by one of the other campaigns. We don't know which one."

It's certainly a forceful denunciation, but can we be so sure? I mean, McCain is going around attacking CNN for reporting on his calling a woman's comment of "How do we beat the bitch?" a great question, so the guy isn't exactly intellectually honest.

But this nugget at the end of the story, about the company contracted to do the push poll, is interesting:

Last year, Western Wats conducted polling that was intended to spread negative messages about Democratic candidates in a House race in New York and a Senate race in Florida, according to reports in The Tampa Tribune and the Albany Times Union, which also said Western Wats conducted the calls on behalf of the Tarrance Group.

That Virginia-based firm now works for Romney's rival, Rudy Giuliani. The campaign has paid the firm more than $400,000, according to federal campaign reports.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Hillary Slings the Mud

There are legitimate and illegitimate reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton. An illegitimate one is to take the words of gossip books by journalist hacks as the gospel. Apparently nobody's doing that, since pretty much nobody's buying those books.

A legitimte reason to oppose Hillary exists in the form of Mark Penn, her pollster, who's apparently already playing dirty by testing negative messges about her chief rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards in push polls.

Eness-Potter, who tells us he's a 32-year-old nursing student, says that the call started with questions about the Iowa caucuses, whom he planned to vote for, and what he thought of President Bush. It also tested a bunch of positive messages about Hillary [...]

According to Eness-Potter, the interviewer hit him with a negative line about Obama's Iraq stance. "It was, 'He claims to promise an end to the Iraq War, yet after making these statements he voted to continue the war,'" Eness-Potter summarized. This apparently is a reference to Iraq war supplementals Obama supported.

A second negative line dealt with Obama's inexperience. "He says he'll bring new energy, but he's only served in the Senate for two years," Eness-Potter summarized.

On Edwards, he says, the first question was on the $400 haircut. He quoted it as follows: "John Edwards proudly promotes himself as a champion of the poor, and yet he went and got a $400 haircut," before continuing with the customary refrain of whether that made the respondent more or less likely to approve of Edwards.

This question was confirmed by the second person we contacted who claimed to have been polled by PSA, Ellen Ballas, a research project coordinator at the University of Iowa. She also confirmed the broad outlines of the negative messages about Obama.

Disgusting. And all too typical for a guy who's prior experience is in union-busting.

It appears that Hillary Clinton's team has swallowed the idea that the way to win in 21st century politics is to smear the hell out of your opponents. And to do it in a primary, in the guise of a classic push poll like this, recalls what George Bush's guys did to John McCain in South Carolina in 2000. Next thing you know, they'll be starting whisper campaigns. I always recoil when liberals say that we "have to find our own Karl Rove." I think we just did and his name is Mark Penn. Still think that's a good idea?