All that rabble-rousing from Mean Girl seems to have scared even Camp McCain. Not only did McCain himself keep “the gloves” on last night, but this morning Steve Benen reports:
Apparently, this was deliberate. This morning on “Fox & Friends,” McCain aide Nicole Wallace backed off Ayers-related talk, saying the association “is between Barack Obama and the voters.”
The Politico reported that the smear campaign that’s been in the works for days may be scrapped altogether. …
Greg Sargent added that the shift “suggests that the McCain campaign’s internal polling on how the Ayers stuff is playing is just brutal, likely among independents. It also suggests that Obama’s counter-attack — lambasting McCain’s campaign for wanting to change the subject from the economy to personal attacks — has been effective.”
Imagine how this frosts the governor of Alaska. But you know, in addition to all the self-defeating she was doing, it wouldn’t surprise me if her fascist foolery hasn’t frosted the Secret Service even more.
UPDATE: Think this 10:08 of Olbermann had some effect on the decision? (A little over-wrought for my taste, but I can’t gainsay a word of it.)
UPDATE II: Well, either Palin grabbed McCain by the collar and gave him a shake while screeching “Wimp!” this morning, or all that above was just more of their lies. Anyhow, now Mark Halperin has “graced” the cyber-pages of Time with a McCain press release containing fresh Ayers — a statement from a John M. Murtagh that "… Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets — but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family." Pity Walter Annenberg is no longer around for Camp McCain to smear too.
If you don’t want to use 10:08 listening to liberal Olbermann’s rant, use it on conservative Daniel Larison’s cogitating.
James Fallows’ “One clip worth a thousand words” says it all, (and in McCain’s own words) so far at least. We’ll have to wait and see if they have gone as low as they can possibly go.
Fallows admits: “This is obviously an anti-McCain clip” but sez it’s instructive even for his supporters.
Joe blows back! According to the LA Times
this is what Joe Biden has to say to McCain/Palin:
“This is beyond disappointing, this is wrong,”
“You can’t call yourself a maverick when all you’ve ever been is a sidekick.”
McCain and Palin are “taking the low road to the highest office in the land,”
“I can take four more years of John McCain’s attacks, but the American people can’t take four more years of John McCain’s Bush policies,”