Didn't they try this already?
From CNN's Ticker:
Obama camp links McCain to Abramoff scandal
(CNN) — Barack Obama's campaign is linking John McCain to the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal that ended several Republicans' political careers three years ago in a new campaign ad hitting Georgia airwaves Wednesday.
Oh yeah, that's right, they did... and factcheckers called them out for it:
The Democratic National Committee proposes to spend unlimited amounts of money to "tell the real story" about John McCain before Republicans can "start smearing" the eventual Democratic nominee. But the line of attack the Democrats outline to their potential donors in an e-mail contains some claims that are false or misleading.
...
It says McCain "looked the other way" rather than investigate Jack Abramoff and a Republican "Culture of Corruption." In fact, McCain's investigation led to a prison term for Abramoff and the downfall of several powerful Republicans. His investigators didn't probe members of Congress directly, but that wasn't the job of his Indian Affairs Committee. And in any case, federal prosecutors opposed a competing congressional investigation which might have interfered with their own efforts.
Obama, in his desperation at his lead evaporating has turned to the hard-hitting DNC play book to smear McCain with deception.
Of course if you look at the other items in that factcheck.org article, you'll notice he was already doing so.
The DNC paints McCain as favoring "endless war" in Iraq. What McCain actually said is that he wouldn't mind a hundred-year troop presence "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."
...
The DNC message makes criticisms of McCain that could be directed at its own leading candidates as well. It notes that he lacks training in economics, which is equally true of Clinton and Obama. And it accuses him of "staggering" reliance on lobbyists for campaign help, when Clinton also has substantial aid from lobbyists and Obama has some from former lobbyists.
Obama supporters have themselves convinced that Obama somehow hadn't gone negative yet. But as with any partisan, Democrat, Republican or otherwise, negative attacks don't tend to come off that way when you think it's "the truth."
Meet the new kind of politics, same as the old kind.
While the factcheck.org article linked above is referring to the DNC's prior attempts to link McCain to Abramoff, even though McCain is one of the primary reasons Abramoff is in prison now... they just released a new article specifically on Obama's ad, noting the omissions it uses to be deceptive on what is, in the end, a good subject for McCain: Reed Reality
Obama's attempts at negative ads seem to be plagued with drawing more attention to his own problems for little gain against his opponents. Earlier examples include trying to equate his relationship with Wright to Hagee's endorsement of McCain, which seemed to only help keep the spotlight on his relationship with Wright. His attacks on McCain's wealth and non-existant ties to Abramoff have only helped to reintroduce the topic of his own wealth as well as the Rezko scandal and questions about how much involvement he had with the man. His attacks on McCain's economic experience has only helped to unearth the factchecking articles that note that Obama has even less.
If you're going to 'go negative' you might want to stick to subjects you aren't even weaker on... especially on topics that have long been debunked by non-partisan factchecking groups that can be quickly turned into ads about your own skeletons in the closet along with how dishonest or deceptive you're being.
Of all the things to attack McCain on, they picked these? It doesn't make sense.
--
Glock21 Op/Ed