Royally Kranked

Friday, August 22, 2008

McCain's Worst Sin, Of Omission

"Sin Of Omission", as McCain stayed silent over the malice done his own child.

As someone with health problems severe enough to not allow myself to be a biological father, I don't understand how any parent can sit by and not only watch their children slimed, but actually make peace with those doing the attacks.

Which brings us to McCain's clear cowardice in refusing to stick up for his own adopted daughter, Bridget.

With a bonus sting in the tail at the end.

I used this argument on our local call-in shows, and posted variations of it at online forums, and NO ONE has even attempted to dispute it, or spin it in a positive way.

Two articles-included in full at my RK Articles Only blog, with the links there to the articles at their original sites-paint a very damning picture of just what McCain's priorities REALLY are, one written by Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager in both the 2000 GOP primaries and the current campaign.

First up, a bit of background about Bridget McCain

The anatomy of a smear campaign

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

Now this seems like a damned decent act on the McCain's part, adopting a child to provide a better life for her seems like a very "Christian" thing to do.

Yet Bridget McCain, a child who had done no wrong, was now being attacked by political operatives ruthless enough to drag their opponents children into the muck & mire.

And the "Christians" this attack was aimed at apparently had no problem with such strategy.

Confronting Ghosts of 2000 in South Carolina

People in some areas of South Carolina began to receive phone calls in which self-described pollsters would ask, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

It was a reference to Bridget, who was adopted as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh and is darker skinned than the rest of the McCain family. Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to "fellow South Carolinians" telling recipients that Mr. McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage."

Now, I'm guessing that most parents reactions to their children being mauled in such a manner would be to want their tormentors blood and scalps in return.

Unbelievably, the attacks on Bridget weren't what shook up McCain, no, that was reserved for the primary voters ire over this tactic.

Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser, and the entire Bush team strongly denied involvement, though it was clear Mr. Bush was the beneficiary of the campaign. When the McCain camp did fight back, it chose Mr. Bush as the target — and a method that backfired.

After promising a positive campaign, Mr. McCain’s campaign put together two negative advertisements, including the one accusing Mr. Bush of twisting the truth "like Clinton." The advertisement offended many Republicans in the state, who considered a comparison to Mr. Clinton, then president and unpopular among Republicans here, beyond the pale.

How unpopular, well, from earlier in the article.....

Several top campaign aides cited a single moment that marked a turning point in the South Carolina campaign, and in Mr. McCain himself. In an effort to fight back, the McCain campaign had gone negative, broadcasting a television advertisement that accused Mr. Bush of twisting the truth "like Clinton," a reference to President Bill Clinton.

At a town-hall-style meeting in Spartanburg after the advertisement ran, a woman stood up, her voice shaking. She recalled how her 13-year-old son had received a phone call from a push pollster calling Mr. McCain a liar and a cheat.

"‘A man got on the phone and talked about how dishonest you were,’" Mr. Weaver recalled her saying. "‘My son had admired you, and now he doesn’t know what to believe.’"

**************

Nancy Snow, a volunteer on the McCain campaign, was at that meeting, too, and remembered seeing the life drain from Mr. McCain’s face.

Ms. Snow said of Mr. McCain’s expression: "He looked like he felt terrible, and terrible for that boy, because he knew he had so many young people supporting him before that. It was kind of like the air had gone out of the room."

McCain was more upset about getting hammered for an ad tying Bush Jr to Clinton, than he was about vicious, scathing attacks on his own daughter.

This incident alone shows that McCain does NOT have the integrity, honor or character to be President, not when he's so willing to let bygones be bygones and make peace with the same elements who libeled and slandered his daughter Bridget. A same failing with Dick Cheney's refusal to blast the homophobic knuckle-dragging US Taliban when they ripped into Mary Cheney's pregnancy.

How can any right-thinking parent not want to avenge the wrong done to their children, how can any "moral" or "ethical" parent cozy up to those who malign their children?

And how does being able to do just those things indicate a positive capacity to be President?

I'm not an Obama supporter, but I have no doubt he'd at least verbally shred anyone who did to his daughters what was done to Bridget McCain, a child wronged so horribly that her father should be ashamed, every waking moment, of his inaction in protecting his daughter.

Read the whole Times article, for even more irony regarding how McCain subsumed protecting his daughter for the greater glory of bringing about a McCain Presidency with the help of the same parasites who attacked Bridget McCain.

Oh, and that sting at the end of the tail, well, that involves the same Rick Davis who wrote the Globe link for this post.

Turns out that, like McCain's aide Randy Scheunemann, Rick Davis also lobbied heavily.

But for Russia, NOT Georgia.

And McCain, well, he met with at least one superduper wealthy Russian industrialist at Davis' behest, which would seem to undercut all that tough, anti-Russia rhetoric McCain's punked himself out with since Russia invaded Georgia.

Aide Helped Controversial Russian Meet McCain

As I stated at the start, I've used this argument against McCain on our local call-in shows here in El Paso, and on public forums around the net, and not one person has tried to spin McCain's making peace with the same operatives who attacked his daughter as any sort of a positive.

It's an argument that needs to be raised, and since the Obama camp won't do it, then it falls to his supporters, and those of us who despise the GOP, to do it. A very hard-hitting ad, with a tagline of "If he won't protect his own daughter, how can you trust Senator McCain to protect you?" is one possibility.

Labels: