Posted on 01/18/2008 3:37:39 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
COLUMBIA, S.C. —The national media thinks John McCain is under siege again, and his campaign is only too happy to help reporters file their stories.
At a rally Thursday, outside McCain’s headquarters just down the street from the state capitol here, the candidate and a key local supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham, are explaining that sorcerers of the dark political arts are at work.
“There’s a lot being said out there on phone calls, in the mail, that’s a bunch of garbage — ignore it,” Graham proclaimed. “We know the truth.”
“You know that a lot of nasty things are going on,” McCain added, “but ignore that stuff.”
The truth is, not that many nasty things are going on in 2008, certainly not compared to the bare-knuckled 2000 GOP presidential primary here, and probably not much more so than in your garden-variety campaign for elected office.
A nasty flier touching on McCain’s POW experience has surfaced and a round of anti-McCain automated phone calls has been launched by a pro-Huckabee third-party group — but those are the same calls that were placed in every other early primary state. Other than that, there’s been little in the way of dirty tricks.
McCain’s lagging rivals don’t mention his name in stump speeches, they don’t criticize him and they aren’t even airing negative ads against him.
You’d hardly know that from the McCain campaign, though. They recognize that there is sympathy to be gained by playing the victim and they’re milking it for all it's worth.
The campaign is savvy enough to understand the almost unslakable thirst among national reporters to write stories heavy with tales of the sort of down-and-dirty tactics that characterized the race between McCain and George W. Bush in 2000.
The votes were barely all counted in New Hampshire before McCain began facing breathless questions such as, did he have any trepidation about going back to the South Carolina killing field?
“Those rubes down in South Carolina, they vote because of dirty, nasty politics,” said Tucker Eskew, a Palmetto State native and former top Bush adviser in the 2000 race, sarcastically giving voice to what he and many others here see as the outsider view of the state. “The gloves are on — and that doesn’t make for nearly an interesting story.”
“Will South Carolinians see their way through their own hatred to do the right thing?” posits former top McCain strategist John Weaver, also mimicking perception of the state’s voters in elite quarters. “It must be oh-so-entertaining at Elaine’s.”
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