Democrats getting desperate as McCain surges

There are some very insightful points in today's Steve Huntley column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

The best indicator of Republican John McCain's surprisingly strong presidential prospects in what should be a slam-dunk Democratic year is not his solid general-election poll numbers but rather the increasingly shrill attacks from Democrats.

The latest was a grotesque slam from Barack Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war. Bombing is a part of warfare, and McCain was serving his country as have legions of other bomber airmen. Rockefeller smeared them all. One further point: McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi when U.S. planes bombed the city, on the orders of McCain's admiral father.

So wrong was this that Rockefeller not only quickly apologized, but his office also later made a point of saying that McCain had accepted his apology.

Last week, Air America host Ed Schultz called McCain "a warmonger" in a warm-up speech before an Obama appearance at a state Democratic Party convention in North Dakota.

Huntley goes on to explain that the great orator Barack Obama left it to his campaign spokespeople to meekly denounce these slurs. Meanwhile, Obama complains about the "snippets" of incendiary comments made by his spiritual advisor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, being played and replayed in the electronic media.

But Obama sees no problem with distorting McCain's "100 years in Iraq" comment.

This is Obama's "new kind of politics."

Related posts:

Air America host Schultz slurs McCain

Obama caught lying on McCain's 100 year remark

The 100 year distortion

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