Times, Politico: McCain Campaign Doesn't Care About Negative Tone

Posted by Ashish on 09.13.2008

Times, Politico says McCain gave up on "honorable" campaign and now will do anything to win...

The New York Times and Politico both have pretty disappointing stories up about how the McCain campaign has basically decided to do whatever it takes to win and doesn't care about whether their attacks are truthful or not.

"We recognize it's not going to be 2000 again," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said. "But he lost then. We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."

"We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn't cover John McCain. So now you've got to be forward-leaning in everything," he said.

It's clear from both stories that the McCain campaign strategy now is to "flood" the next few weeks with false attacks, false charges, and whatever else they can use to keep the focus off of issues, Bush, and McCain's own policies, and instead keep the focus on Obama's responses to McCain attacks.

"Every day not talking about the economy, the war and how to fix a broken system is a victory for McCain," said John Weaver, a former top strategist to the nominee who left the campaign last year. "They're going to ride it as long as they can and as long as the mainstream media puts up every ridiculous charge."

The risk here, of course, is that McCain gets exposed as a liar. But the thinking here is that McCain has been so engrained in the public's image as an honorable hero, he can now say whatever he wants and people won't question him.

Mr. Sipple, the Republican strategist, voiced concern that Mr. McCain's approach could backfire. "Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end," he said. "But it's very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about ‘straight talk' and integrity."

This isn't exactly a new thing. Bush did the same thing in 2004, though not to this degree. It's just very surprising for a guy like McCain, who claims to be so honorable and claims that he wouldn't sellout on his principles to win an election, going out there and endorsing what has turned into perhaps the sleaziest campaign in awhile. If McCain ends up losing, he won't have just lost an election, he will have lost his honor and everything he once stood for. I guess he thinks it's worth the risk.