Did I mention that after dropping her Bridge to Nowhere lie for three days while she was in Alaska and people know better, Palin was out west yesterday repeating the lie again?
Pathological liars.
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[…] As John Cole of Balloon-Juice says, This Needs To Run In Every State. […]
Dan
Ouch!
oh really
But…But…But…John McCain was a POW!!!
chopper
all i know is, with the financial news today i’m happy to vote for a guy who admits to having no knowledge at all of america’s economy.
jeffreyw
Bama needs to challenge McCain to a fuckin duel:
You, sir, are no gentleman. *slap*
cleek
this is why they lie.
oh really
John, do you ever lie awake at night thinking — I used to support these guys?
Incertus
There’s also a great one about eight minutes into this video that focuses on the equal pay for equal work argument. There’s so much to hit them on that it must be hard for them to pick their shots.
Georgette Orwell
Wow. Pitch perfect.
This approach–using everyone else’s words, including McCain’s (and I’d like to see a few like this just on his flip-flips) seems like a good way to land haymakers without bruising ones knuckles. I hope they keep it up, despite the cries I already can hear saying Obama ought to apologize to McCain and Pailin. Riiiiiight.
Jake
Let’s just hope it gains some real traction. What I want to see is a stampede of journalists around the country, with lead-ins to their evening news stories along the lines of “Senator McCain, facing continued questions around the dishonesty of his campaign, said today that…”
If the McCain=liar meme really picks up, Obama will have something. I remain skeptical this is possible.
Fe E
That was just about the first thing I saw on Morning Joe today–it looks like Obama has the chops to get the media to play his ads for free too.
A fantastic ad, and a savvy execution of its roll out, 2008 ain’t 2004 folks.
Apsaras
But does it work?
Does calling a politician a “liar”, even one as canonized as John McCain, make a difference to swing voters? “All politicians are liars” is the received wisdom, after all. I’m not saying I dislike the ad, or that I don’t think John McCain needs to be called out for being the liar that he is. I’m just saying that complaining about your opponent’s “negative campaigning” never seems to amount to much in politics.
This ad is a good start, but we need more. We’ve got a serious financial crisis going on in this country right now, and the Obama campaign needs to make the words “Keating Five” part of the campaign vocabulary.
chopper
it did in 2000. al gore was turned into a ‘serial liar’ for far less than what mccain has said. and it hurt him with swing voters and independents.
jeffreyw
I’m afraid the market meltdown is gonna crowd the Bama offensive out of the picture.
zzyzx
I do wonder if this is a distraction away from the economy which right now looks like a winning issue. I guess we’ll know over the next few weeks.
DonnaInMichigan
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull” –W.C. Fields
In this instance, that would be a PIT-BULL w/ lipstick.
dslak
You can’t really blame the Republicans for waging this kind of campaign. It’s worked in helping them win elections for a generation or so now. I blame the people on whom this kind of campaigning works.
The Moar You Know
Disappointed. It’s going to take a lot more than this to get the job done – the Obama campaign needs to use the word “liar” and use it over and over again.
Incertus
Yeah, but IOKIYAR.
Seriously, I’d love to see a study that looks at the correlation between a group’s willingness to overlook rhetorical dishonesty if they share some other connection with a candidate, i.e. if they’re willing to let a little lying go if they perceive that the candidate is doing it for a higher purpose.
Apsaras
Then let’s hope it sticks this time too. It may be a little difficult, with John McCain’s biography though. (And by “biography”, I mean what he did 40 years ago. Since then? Ehhh, not so much.)
I do think ads like this are smart in the sense that they’re a deliberate attempt to push McCain’s very visble buttons. The guy has, for a very long time, considered himself above petty politics. He really believes that Maverick stuff, and as long as he was a senator from Arizona with a very safe seat, he had the luxury of talking about high-minded politics and eschewing the proverbial low road.
It’s sad to see that when John McCain’s principles were tested, when he found himself in a dead-heat political race that he had to fight to win, that all of those pretty words about ending the politics of personal destruction turned out to be just words.
Jake
This morning, in FL, McCain apparently repeated his claim that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong.
Everything’s going swimmingly.
chopper
well, the market meltdown this week isn’t going to be good for mccain. they guy knows all of jack and shit about economic matters, and what he does believe in is the same sort of garbage that led to this mess.
and palin? jesus, she’s a buffoon.
Napoleon
I love the ad. Heck yeah, it helps with swing voters. If Obama manages to establish the narrative that McCain is dishonest it is all over for McCain. All he has to sell is that somehow he is a differant straight shooting, do what he thinks is best for the people politician, and if Obama blows it away, even if it takes a shine off of him as a differant type of politician, Obama wins.
TheFountainHead
MOAR PLEEZ!
I WANTZ MAI DAM UNIDY PONEE!!
The Moar You Know
Goddamn. Everyone should read that, even though in one sense it is somewhat demoralizing; Dems have a lot of catching up to do in the art of campaigning.
We need a liberal version of one of those. Badly.
liberal
Could someone briefly summarize the ad?
Flash here at work needs updating, and I don’t have admin privileges.
chopper
“john mccain is a lying sack of crap”
dslak
Is Mr. Feld available? Maybe somebody on the Democratic side should hire him.
pillsy
Well, I’m glad to see the tone shifting from, “John McCain is a decent man,” to, “Seriously, fuck that guy. Fuck him right in the ear.”
bago
Or exasperate the change doctrine of McCain.
cleek
go read the link i dropped, above.
mcd410x
Of course, the obvious (and rope-a-dope) riposte to this is that the librul media is at it again, trying to get its candidate, Obama, elected.
This is Democrats still using the “Truth Matters” playbook. And it doesn’t.
Eric
And then McSame promtly fumbled away this lucky break. McCain Campaign’s statement this morning on the market belly flop: “Uhh. Durr. Errr. Umm. Wha?”
dmsilev
Capsule summary of the ad: John McCain is a liar, and can’t do anything except launch smear attacks.
Lots of quotes in the background from various sources like “the truth be damned”, etc.
To add (no doubt deliberate) insult to injury, the ad’s title is “Honor”. McCain is going to blow his top, guaranteed. I just hope some reporter manages to ask him directly about the ad.
-dms
dslak
The issues addressed in cleek’s link are also addressed from a similar perspective in this post at FiveThirtyEight.com.
Napoleon
I think he is dead wrong, at least in so far as saying in effect people have made up their minds to like Palin. Over the last 4 days her favorable/unfavorable ratings have become worse then any other Pres or VP candidate. I think the book is still open on her.
Barbar
Yeah, this idea that after 2 whole weeks, people’s opinions of Palin are fixed and favorable and there’s nothing to be done about it is simply flat-out wrong. And from the very beginning about 50% of poll respondents thought that she wasn’t qualified for the VP job.
Napoleon
Of course he isn’t saying that people think she isn’t qualified, just that they like her. But still I don’t think even the liking part is fixed yet.
dslak
Napoleon, the thing to keep in mind is that VP candidates typically have very high approval ratings, so even if hers are lower than usual, they could still be relatively high amont likely voters.
The suggestion that Palin is “likeable, but doesn’t have the right kind of experience to be president,” isn’t an argument the Obama campaign can make, as it opens Obama up to easy criticisms. I think the best idea is to tie Palin’s shortcomings to McCain, and focus on his flaws, rather than wasting ammo on Palin alone. That also seems to be the Obama campaign’s strategy.
MCA
I agree with dslak above, but then wonder why Obama’s not using the served up on a silver platter issue on which to tie Palin’s Bush-in-lipstick petty tyrant anti-feminist traits to McCain and his own failings on a substantive issue. Tie together the Wasilla rape kit issue with the Alaska legislation singling out her town, in order to get VAWA funds pursuant to federal law written by Joe Biden with reauthorization co-sponsored by Barack Obama, and voted against in both instances by none other than John McCain. Aim it squarely at a female audience and ask them who they think is looking out for their interests. It presents Palin and McCain as two peas in a pod.
mcd410x
As Harry S Truman (he dropped TWO big ones) once said:
“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? It’s about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them.”
rollSound
Calling McCain and his Rovian Blech Squad “liars” is going to run out of steam before November. We’ll need to kick it up a notch or two.
Remember that these guys are trying to buy your vote with these lies. Someone who lies to get you to hand something over is a con man.
“Con man”, “scam artist” etc. are the terms we should be using for these guys from now on.
zuzu's petals
People need to go to her rallies and set off “wrong answer” buzzers every time she says that. And the plane thing. And the earmarks thing.
And some major media outlet needs to keep a running score of the number of times she does this…”Sarah Palin repeated the disproven claim that ____ for the 42nd time today.”
Delia
See, I’ve had trouble with this right from the start, because I never thought she was likable. From her convention speech on, I thought she was the epitome of the snide, sarcastic high school girl who’s the leader of the popular clique and destroys the reputation or self-esteem of anyone, male or female, who stands in her way. You see her in every high school flick in one form or another, and she’s never a positive character. It’s just that suddenly all the Republican women want a friend like her and don’t her to say mean things about them, and that’s the way the spinners are spinning it. I mean, who wants to be smart? That’s for nerds.
Tsulagi
Good ad. A twofer. Re-brand him as the Crooked Talk Express and as this Bush’s favorite son. Wouldn’t have hurt to have ended the ad with that classic Bush-McCain love photo.
Over at RedState, the short bus brigadiers have a post up about this very ad. As can be expected, the ad is good news for McCain. The irrefutable “logic”? The ad reminds voters the MSM is in the tank for Obama. Unforced error. They see the big picture.
zuzu's petals
Hmmm, it’s supposed to say “claim that (blank) for the 42nd time… .”
For some reason the straight line- for- blank function doesn’t work for me.
photonaton
The beatings will continue until morale improves.