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Big family values campaigners from the GOP – have been blanket calling voters with disturbing messages – that are causing youngsters who answer the phone to become upset by them.
MCCAIN IF YOU CARE STOP THE ROBO HATE CALLS NOW!!
One of the more noteworthy responses to John McCain’s massive robocall campaign tying Barack Obama to Bill Ayers has been from parents whose children have been on the receiving end of the incendiary calls.
Many have contacted the Huffngton Post detailing concerns that their kids were being told, in essence, that the possible next president of the United States associates with terrorist figures.
“My daughter answered the phone today and began listening to the most disturbing call regarding bombing and terrorists. She ran with the phone to get me, I heard just the end snippet of the call and immediately called the number cited as responsible,” wrote a reader from North Carolina. “I was so angry and let them have it. I had to explain to my 7-year-old daughter that no one was bombing anyone else. This was a horrific experience.”
So it was more than just a bit ironic to be reminded that during the Republican South Carolina primary in 2000 it was a distraught mother who thrust the issue of the anti-McCain robocall campaign into the national spotlight.
A reader sends over a clip from the film company “Journeyman Pictures,” that replays some notable news footage from those heady political days. In it is a shot of a woman, addressing McCain at a South Carolina rally, with word of the behind-the-scenes effort to paint him as “a cheat and a liar and a fraud.”
“He was so upset,” she said of her 14-year-old son who had received the call. “He was almost in tears. I was so mad. I was so livid last night I couldn’t sleep.”
McCain, visibly shaken by the woman’s testimony, denounced the tactic entirely and would later unilaterally pull all of his negative advertising.
“I really hope that people that are doing these things could have heard and seen your statement because we don’t need to do this to young people,” said the Senator. Outside the hall, he was even more direct: “I’m calling on my good friend George Bush to stop this now, to stop this now. I can’t believe that a person from a good family such as George Bush wouldn’t stop this. But if he doesn’t then I will call him or I will write him or I will do whatever I can.”
Eight years later, the role, in many ways, is reversed (though, to be fair, the Obama campaign has not denied that it is running negative robocalls itself). Only this time, it seems, there is a stark difference: the robocalls don’t seem to be working. On Sunday, McCain’s own running mate said the tactic had “irritated” people who were “just being inundated.”
“If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand,” said Gov. Sarah Palin, “I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls and includes spending so much money on the television ads that, I think, is kind of draining out there in terms of Americans’ attention span.”
Meanwhile, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that sixty percent of voters thought Obama’s relationship with Ayers was “not a legitimate issue in the presidential campaign.” Thirty-seven percent said it was.
And yet, despite the criticism and evidence, McCain has stuck by the strategy that once undermined his presidential ambitions.
“These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000,” he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
Source: HP
With the presidential campaign approaching its final stretch, Barack Obama finds himself in an enviable position.
One official close to the campaign said that September’s fundraising haul set a new record, surpassing the $66 million Obama raised in August. Another aide, asked about the campaign’s take, would only describe it: “big.”
Moreover, the assault that John McCain has launched against Obama’s character – including repeated criticisms of the Illinois Democrat’s association to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers – has largely backfired. Obama sources shared internal campaign polling figures that show a sharp fall in positive feelings for the Republican ticket. Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain’s unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent, notably higher than anything detected in recent public polling.
Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain’s unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent
Gov. Sarah Palin is faring just as poorly if not worse. In New Hampshire, an official with knowledge of internal polling says the Alaska Republican’s favorable rating has nosedived to 36 percent, with 56 percent viewing her unfavorably.
Even within Republican circles it seems there is a growing sentiment that McCain’s recent strategy has had a blow-back effect. On Sunday, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol called the negative tactics “stupid.”
“The main thing to say about these negative ads — which, I don’t think, almost none of them has been across the line — they haven’t worked,” he said on Fox News Sunday. “Obama’s favorable rating is as high as it’s been in three months. It’s actually gone up in the last month. So it’s a stupid campaign.”
Conservative writers George Will and Paul Gigot, as well as more than a handful of Republican officials, expressed equal amounts of doubt or disparagement with how the Arizona Republican has handled his campaign in recent days.
Obama aides will attack Republicans over efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.
And yet, the McCain campaign seems content to double down on its recent course of action. On Sunday night it was announced that the Republican National Committee would make a new push – in the form of a web video – to raise the Ayer’s issue.
At this point, Obama might welcome the move. His campaign’s data suggests that the remaining undecideds are those voters who tend to be non-political — a group that does not respond well to negative advertisements. As such, much of what Chicago headquarters plans to do going forward will echo the economic message it has pushed in recent weeks.
There will, however, be one new ripple. On Monday, Obama’s communication’s shop is expected to go on the offense on issues of voter protection after a week in which Republicans cried foul about registration efforts in various states and painted the community organizing group ACORN as a criminal enterprise.
Obama aides will attack Republicans over efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.
Source: HP
William Ayers works as a professor – and likely there are a lot of students and faculty members who associate with him. The Woods Foundation which Obama and Ayers both worked on was started by a Republican. We are truly sorry for what the Murtagh went through as a result of the Ayers attack on their family home – some 40 years ago – but these accusations being made against Obama and now his wife are based on thin ice.
The McCain campaign is now broadening their attack on Obama’s past association with William Ayers to include Michelle Obama — even though McCain has repeatedly said spouses should be off limits during the campaign.
McCain is ditching yet another formerly-claimed principle
The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.
That’s the entire attack. We wish we were joking. But we aren’t.
In launching this latest, McCain is ditching yet another formerly-claimed principle as he faces the growing likelihood of defeat. In a statement back in June, the McCain campaign said: “Senator McCain agrees with Senator Obama that spouses should not be an issue in this campaign, and he has stated that position frequently.”
The attack on Michelle came on a McCain conference call with reporters this afternoon featuring John Murtagh, who has been hitting Obama over the Weather Underground’s attack on his family’s home back in 1970. Murtagh noted that Dohrn and Michelle Obama had both worked at the firm starting in the late 1980s.
The firm’s Chicago office currently employs more than 500 lawyers.
Murtagh didn’t even bother alleging that the two even knew each other, instead suggesting that they might have. If so, he said, the Obamas have known the two longer than suspected.
“If it is true” that the two women knew each other, Murtagh said, “the relationship is almost a decade older than Senator Obama has acknowledged. And that can very easily be resolved by Senator Obama, by Mrs. Obama, by Mr. Ayers and by Ms. Dohrn.”
“And incidentally, I would emphasize that we’ve all been focusing on Senator Obama,” said Murtagh. “I think we need to speak to his wife.”
Keep in mind that this wasn’t any surrogate speaking off the cuff. He was on a call organized by the McCain campaign, and he was apparently reading from a prepared statement, which would of course have been vetted by McCain aides. And so another once-cherished McCain principle gets junked in the service of self-parody.
Original radio broadcast
Source: TPM
Out Foxing Karl Rove 
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