McCain-- Beyond Dishonest, Beyond Dishonorable

The most recent presidential polling I've seen is in today's Des Moines Register and it shows Obama with a healthy, and growing, double digit lead over McCain among Iowa's likely voters. Iowans take their politics pretty seriously and, from years of experience as the nation's retail politics gatekeeper, they can smell a crooked political hack long before anyone else gets past the first layer of Aqua Velva.

Many Fox viewers were shocked today when even Karl Rove admitted that McCain's ads have gone "one step too far" and "beyond the 100% truth test." That's as close as you're likely to hear the man behind the GOP's most vicious negative ad campaign ever, call McCain a lying sack of dishonorable shit, willing to lose whatever shred of dignity he once possessed in an attempt to grab the White House. Watch Rove:



But it isn't just Karl Rove and most Iowa voters who smell a skunk on the Double Talk Express. It's taken longer than it should have but editorial writers all over the country are aghast at the steady stream of lies coming out of the campaign. When that ad guy who was working for McCain saw the playbook and quit a few months back-- saying he couldn't be part of the savage, gutter operation McCain had countenanced-- no one expected it to be as bad as it's already become. In today's Chicago Tribune, a conservative Republican newspaper, Steve Chapman makes the point that everyone is starting to see-- that To McCain, the truth is expendable. "Why does McCain insist on running such a mendacious campaign? There is plenty an honest conservative might say in opposition to Obama... But 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. He has charged repeatedly that his opponent is willing to lose a war to win an election. What's McCain willing to lose to become president? Nothing so consequential as a war. Just his soul."

Tony Norman it the Pittsburgh Post Gazette is also concerned about the state of McCain's mortal soul.

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?...Where is the honor in reciting lies for something as transient as political advantage? What are we as voters supposed to make of political ads that accuse Barack Obama of advocating sex education for kindergartners?... Despite the intellectually dishonest maneuvering of your campaign, many Americans admire you, John McCain. Before you embraced the darkness, I was among those who disagreed with your politics, but considered you honorable. Now it's hard to look at you without seeing the scoundrels who made you what you are today.

All over the country, Americans are noticing McCain has willingly sold his soul to Satan. His choice of Palin is absolutely stunning shocking-- a completely irresponsible and cynical choice based on electoral consideration without one care in the world about what could happen to our country if he-- old, sick and cancerous-- should die. Today's St. Petersburg Times editorialized that his campaign of lies has disgraced him. "McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and doublespeak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity, and it is a short-term strategy that eventually will backfire with the very types of independent-thinking voters that were so attracted to him."

Jay Bookman writes in today Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 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. With stuff like this, the McCain camp has cut any remaining tethers to reality and integrity and is now floating wherever the winds of illusion and whimsy may take them. It's quite remarkable, and quite insulting to the intelligence of the American people."

The Boston Globe accuses McCain or prezel logic and says he's "ready and willing to say preposterous things to win. The Washington Post's David Ignatius writes he'll stop at nothing to win and Paul Krugman has aptly termed his campaign, in the NY Times a blizzard of lies, while the editorial board there-- and editorial board that endorsed McCain-- comes as close as they likely ever will to apologizing for having been taken in themselves:

"I'm John McCain, and I approved this message." 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.

Even the generally shameless A.P., which has been shilling with a straight face for McCain all year, can't gloss over the deluge of distortions and blatant lies that have come to define the most scurrilous presidential campaign in modern American history.

The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak. Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a self-proclaimed tell-it-like-it-is maverick, keeps saying his running mate, Sarah Palin, killed the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere when, in fact, she pulled her support only after the project became a political embarrassment. He said Friday that Palin never asked for money for lawmakers' pet projects as Alaska governor, even though she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone's taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.

Count the lies.

UPDATE: DID YOU EVER THINK YOU'D READ SOMETHING LIKE THIS... FROM 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.

Today's issue: health insurance. John McCain wants to tax your employer-provided health care benefits. He wants to replace those benefits with an insufficient tax credit--$2500 for individuals and $5000 for families (the average cost per family for health insurance is $12000).

UPDATE: EVEN FOX IS SICK OF McCAIN'S CAMPIGN OF LIES AND DISTORTIONS

Watch Fox's Megyn Kelly skewering McCain's professional inhouse liar, Tucker Bounds, and trying to hold his feet to the fire for all the lies:



Of course, on the other side on the coin, news anchors are talking about how people in Colorado will relate to Palin because she goes sledding.