Country First?
Even as John McCain claims to be questioning Barack Obama's judgment, not his patriotism, when he asserts that Obama would rather lose the war than lose the election, the smears from the McCain camp continue.
The attack machine is sharpest with surrogates like Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who seems gripped by a somewhat understandable cathartic need to stick it to the party that all but abandoned him in 2006. This race is "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put his country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate that has not," Joltin' Joe declared recently.
Susan Demas asks whether McCain is actually "putting his country first" by indulging in and refusing to condemn unscrupulous campaign tactics. [more ...]
The assault ratchets up in the blogosphere and right-wing media, of course, where reasoned intellectuals like Michael Savage gently raise if Obama is a terrorist. Oh, and he's black, if you haven't noticed. You know, like gang-bangers and Kwame Kilpatrick. Just sayin'.McCain has done precious little to denounce any of this, shrugging, "You gotta have a sense of humor" about the latest smear book on Obama by white supremacist sympathizer Jerome Corsi. In July, McCain shelled out $19 million in mostly negative ads (only $7 million less than he raised) and he is indeed closing the gap in polling.
But at what price? Has he resigned himself to run a campaign that falls far short of the honor and statesmanship he professes just to win? Sorry, John, that ain't putting your country first. I'd say that's conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman.
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