Outrageous McCain Lies

Lies

For links and more detail, read John Aravosis:

St. Petersburg Times (Editorial) “Campaign of lies disgraces McCain” McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak.

Atlanta Journal Constitution (Jay Bookman) The volume and audacity of lies pouring from the McCain campaign is startling and even historic…That’s really something, lying straight out about a FactCheck group, knowing that you’re going to get caught but not giving a damn about it.

Pittsburg Post Gazette (Tony Norman) Where have you gone, John McCain? You once said you'd rather lose an election than lose a war. Is it worth winning an election if it means forfeiting your soul on the altar of political expediency?

Kansas City Star (Barb Shelly) McCain stoops to deception, distortion: Maybe you’ve seen it. [snip] Distort. Twist. Deceive. Damage. And the winning candidate drags a load of public contempt into office.

Boston Globe (Scot Lehigh) Pretzel logic from the McCain campaign: Here’s the question voters should be asking themselves this week: Just how stupid does the McCain-Palin campaign think I am? The answer: Dumb enough to hoodwink with charges so contrived and cynical they make your teeth ache...

Washington Post (David Ignatius) Stopping at nothing to win: Thinking about the Palin choice, you begin to ponder other moves McCain has made on the road to winning the Republican nomination.

Washington Post (Eugene Robinson) The Scream Machine: There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values.

Chicago Tribune (Steve Chapman) To McCain the truth is expandable: McCain has concluded that a fact-based case about Obama isn't enough to prevail in November. So he has chosen to smear his opponent with ridiculous claims that he thinks the American people are gullible enough to believe.

Chicago Tribune (Frank James) This is an old-fashioned, unreconstructed politics whose goal, first and foremost, is to get the candidate elected, the truth be damned.

Chicago Tribune (Eric Zorn) 'I'm John McCain and I approved this message.' With that infamous admission, McCain surrendered his integrity and signaled a willingness to say or do anything to get elected… We used to expect better from John McCain. No longer.

TIME (Joe Klein) A new rule here: Rather than do the McCain campaign's bidding by wasting space on Senator Honor's daily lies and bilge--his constant attempts to divert attention from substantive issues--I'm going to assume that others will spend more than enough time on the sewage that Steve Schmidt is shoveling and, from now on, try to stick to the issues.

TIME (Joe Klein) Apology Not Accepted: he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it... [snip] Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

TIME (Joe Klein) Another McCain Flip Flop: Army Times, which is not--last time I checked--a radical left wing publication, takes John McCain to task for changing his position on the Future Combat Systems program. This is yet another example of how running for President has driven McCain off the deep end.

New York Times (Paul Krugman) Blizzard of Lies: And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country? What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

New York Times (Editorial) This from that straight-talker of yore, who fervidly denounced the 2004 Bush campaign’s Swift Boat character attacks on John Kerry’s military record. What a difference four years makes, especially after Mr. McCain secured the nomination by hiring some of the same low-blow artists from the Bush campaign.

New York Times (Larry Rohter) The advertisement [“Disrespectful”] is the latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts. The nonpartisan political analysis group Factcheck.org has already criticized “Disrespectful” as “particularly egregious,” saying that it “goes down new paths of deception,” and is “peddling false quotes.”

New York Times (Michael Cooper and Jim Rutenberg) McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions: Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his “Straight Talk” image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

ABC News-Political Punch (Jake Tapper) One can only imagine what the John McCain of 2004 – who called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads “dishonest and dishonorable” – would say about this ad… I suppose one could twist this stuff any way you want if your only point is to make an inflammatory charge. And win an election... and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker ... says the ad is a gross distortion. I agree -- in both senses of the word "gross."

AP (Charles Babington) The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone's taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.