This morning on Fox News Sunday, a group called the National Republican Trust PAC is running ads linking Obama to Jeremiah Wright. They will put $2.5 million into running the ad in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the final days:
On Saturday night, the Obama campaign dismissed the ad, calling it a “last gasp desperate attack from people who have not steered away from any negative attack. None of these smears have really had an impact,” said spokeswoman Linda Douglass. “People are not interested in this.”
The Illinois senator cited potential attacks from well-funded independent 527 groups when he justified his decision to break his promise to accept public funds, but for the most part, those attacks have not materialized. Still, the impact of the Wright ads in the final days of the campaign was impossible to determine.
The National Republican Trust PAC also ran a campaign against Obama over drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants, with a blast email entitled "Obama’s Plan: Mohamed Atta Gets His Driver’s License."
FactCheck.org said that the Atta ad "mixes a pile of false claims and the image of 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta to create one of the sleaziest false TV ads of the campaign." They indicate that the NRT PAC is run by a former writer for the Moonie Insight magazine:
It has reported spending substantial sums to the conservative Web site Newsmax and to other vendors for "email communication" opposing Obama’s election, and to a Virginia company called Integram for "direct mail." It has also listed expenditures for "media production" and a "media buy."
Its Web site lists its executive director as Scott Wheeler, who also writes articles for Newsmax, which the NRT PAC pays to distribute anti-Obama e-mail messages, many of which are little more than fundraising pleas.
Rick Wilson, the consultant who made the ad, as saying "this is the base giving a collective direction to where the campaign should have gone a long time ago." It remains to be seen whether this will actually help John McCain, or feeds the wingnuts what they want to hear.
Update: Greg Sargent reports that the ads will run nationally too.
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What about Hagee?
I saw one yesterday here in the Philadelphia market.
A Hagee?
This may seem a silly, irrelevant question, but why is this post on my front page twice?
Never ever underesitmate the blinding ignorance of a large portion of the American electorate. There may well be enough to swing the election to McCain, along with voter suppression efforts and vote tabulation fraud.
MSNBC had it in the SF market early this morning.
I saw it here in the Denver area too. My question is – is there any opportunity for a law suit not from the Obama campaign but from the people for false information. We need accountability throughout this country.
If the Republicons didn’t think that these negative, polarizing, lying ads didn’t work they wouldn’t be using them. They are well aware of the ignorance and mallability of not only their base but the “independent” voter.
Looks to me like the last desperate gasps of a dying campaign. They could have tried to appeal to the same preconceptions with a less heavy-handed approach, but subtlety is apparently not in their playbook.
These ad slots would have been contracted for months and months ago – they knew that they would be doing this at this point.
they really are determined to go out with a pathetic, hateful whimper aren’t they? as far as I can tell, the customary tightening of the race doesn’t really seem to be happening in key battlegrounds and now we find out that even AZ may be in play. McCain’s getting illtimed and presumably unwelcome endorsements from the likes of Dick Cheney and failing to get endorsements from traditionally conservative rags like the Economist (which endorsed Obama, calling him, gasp, a better conservative than the Republican), shrub’s obliging by trashing basic consumer and environmental protections by fiat and getting blamed for it by the MSM for a change… not to mention sabotaging his own war in Iraq by trying’ to start one with Syria, the best October surprise they could pull was to pick on Obama’s elderly aunt, FL keeps on expanding early voting, SoVa seems determined to join NoVa, and PA’s not really budging. face it, McCain, this doesn’t look like it’s happening.
The Rs are too late. I don’t believe that anyone is undecided at this point. If they are, they must have been a coma for the last few months. McC can’t overcome the huge advantage Obama has.
Never ever underestimate the stupidity of many of this countries voters. If you doubt this may I reccommend C-span to you.
digg
6% of voters who already voted in Florida were still undecided!
What about THIS?From The Sunday TimesNovember 2, 2008
Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Barack Obama
The Republicans accuse Obama of ‘palling around’ with Ayers
Sarah Baxter in Washington
Leading article: Barack Obama is America’s future
The Republicans have made a last-minute attempt to prevent Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House by trying to recruit an Oxford academic to “prove” that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a former terrorist.
With two days before the election, Obama is poised to become America’s first black president, according to polls showing he has an average six-point lead over John McCain, his Republican opponent.
Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases.
He was contacted last weekend and offered $10,000 (£6,200) to assess alleged similarities between Obama’s bestseller, Dreams from My Father, and Fugitive Days, a memoir by William Ayers.
Ayers, now a university professor in Chicago, co-founded the Weathermen, a radical 1960s underground group that bombed government buildings in Washington and New York. The Republicans accuse Obama of “palling around” with him.
The offer to Millican to prove that Ayers wrote Obama’s book was made by Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah. He hoped to corroborate a theory advanced by Jack Cashill, an American writer.
Fox and Cannon each suggested to The Sunday Times that the other had taken the initiative.
Cannon said that he merely recommended computer testing of the books. He doubted whether Obama wrote his autobiography, adding: “If Ayers was the author, that would be interesting.”
Fox said he had hoped that Cannon would raise the $10,000 to run a computer test. “It was Congressman Cannon who initially pointed me in that direction and, from our conversation, I thought he might be able to find someone [to raise the $10,000].”
He believed that if “proof” of Ayers’s involvement was provided by an Oxford academic it would be political dynamite.
Fox contacted Millican, who said: “He was entirely upfront about this. He offered me $10,000 and sent me electronic versions of the text from both books.”
Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausible”. A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.
Millican said: “I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them.” He said Fox gave him the impression that Cannon had got “cold feet about it being seen to be funded by the Republicans”.———————I consider this HUGE,but hardly ANYBODY is talking about it!
Interesting to watch Chuck Todd show (inadvertently) how statistically improbable a McSame win would be. He had to manipulate almost all the tossup states into the McSame column to get to 270.
I saw that stat too, was that on Maddow?
1,814 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Thanx for the post, it’s jest been a matter of time and logic that the real nasty stuff would come with less than three days to debunk the shit and get some wingnuts sued and exposed. I think that this “scorched earth” Kamakazi tactic has a longer term purpose, however, and that’s ta set the narrative of “illegitimate” and “alien” and to secure the racist divisions deep in the soil of strategic areas to be cultivated over the next 2 years and haversted in 2010 and 2012…ya think there might be a reason for the concentration on the most racist areas north of the Mason-Dixon Line?
The DNC and “independent” 527’s like MoveOn and web based progressive actions like Accountability Now are gunna hafta step up big time in the next two years ta dump a whole lot of political Agent Orange on the battlefields of 2010 and 2012.
And Jane, how are you dealin’ with the possibility of Rahm out of congress and in the White House as COS for Obama? Doya think this was a stroke of Big Dawg’s tail to get ‘im and Mrs. Dawg out in Florida when it counted?
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE NEXT BATTLES HAVE ALREADY STARTED!!
Yea,I think it was.
stunning…
IIRC, there was a (Supreme?) court decision that basically said political campaigns can say anything, even outright lies, as part of their first amendment rights.
Who ARE these people?
Never underestimate the numbers of ignorant comatose voters in the U.S.. The Republicons have always counted on this sizeable number who respond to their Pavlovian dog whistle.
Citizen Raven:
I saw that too…and after a “what the FUCK” moment…I figured it was jest a reflection that the polls still don’t have a clue what’s really goin on.
Maybe I’m being logical ….. but wasn’t Mohamed Atta legally in the country under a Republican President….. obtained a FL drivers license in a state run by a Republican Gov…… and the guys taking flight school were in FL and AZ….. right under McCain’s nose….. AND a Republican Gov in AZ…..
but but but…. Obama is gona…. hooey….
Seriously? That is the definition of dumbass.
P.S. Citizen Raven
How are ya recoverin’ from the ass kickin’ yer Dawgs took to Florida? Are ya hangin’ crepe and conductin’ a black mass with voodoo dolls of Tim Tivo this AM? (Reality caught up with my Gophers yesterday too.)
When I see the interviews with people who are voting, or have voted, for Obama my jaw drops. People who are conservative, gun-supporting, basically “uninformed” voters. Don’t think they are so “uninformed” now. Scared, worried, and voting their pocketbooks. When the vote is about “me” that’s a whole different ballgame and they realize that they and we are in trouble. Besides, there’re only so many votes you can steal – and it looks as if Obama’s campaign has covered it well.
Masaccio is upstairs…new post
Yep, just saw it during MSNBC (Direct TV) about a half hour ago – I’m in Northern Colorado.
Also need to remember that we are talking about “electoral” votes. I hate that but that’s where we are. Obama has gone for the large electoral vote – smooth planning, IMO.
Progressives, who by and large are educated, use facts and logic to shape their political orientation. Republicons rely on the fact that most Americas lack a qualilty education which would allow them critical thinking skills making them susceptible to manipulation. Until Americans are educated on the realities of American and world history, not just the myths, then democracy will always teeter on the abyss.
I suspected that H. L. Mencken would have had some thoughts on this sort of thing, which is almost sertainly much broader than one would initially imagine. Perhaps:
Wish I could share your optimism but I’ll never underestimate the criminality of the Republicon Party.
hehe… it’s possible that they really are undecided, despite their vote or perhaps (hopefully) they actually did avoid checking any box for president. I actually did that once during Bush I.
Quite an ass-whippin. Least my Illini won!
That ad was all over TV last night up here in Anchorage! Why??
I noticed that too! Seems like throwing money away, but that’s fine by me. Let them squander their funds in the last days.
it may be that Same is now embacing a popular vote strategy at the last minute… hehehe
It would probably be easy to steal 1% of the vote or maybe even 2% but McC would have to steal anywhere from 6 to 15 percent to overcome Obama’s lead. I really don’t think that’s possible. Rove may be good but he’s not that good.
The new fragrance, from John McCain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4hd3sAYwo4
Just more proof piled on the heap that the Rove-Smear-Machine is made up up of nothing more than desperate, despicable, sub-human slime…
Maybe they can fill up that new pond at the pig farm (crawford) with themselves!!!
Funny, after eight years of Republican corporatist fascism, under Cheney and Bush, and backed up by McCain, I do believe that we have had enough, thank you very much, sir. Why is McCain wasting his money with recycling ancient Fox smears about the good Reverend? Yawn. Take a nap, John.
Socialist Sarah will soon be sailin’ back up to the Upper One and she can leave the Lower 48 alone, finally.
The whole point of Obama’s massive GOTV was to pre-empt what they knew was coming in PA and other ’swing’ states. As many here have pointed out, PA is the last stand for McCain because it is the only big state where he has an outside chance that doesn’t do early voting, which leaves an open door for last minute smears. The defence is GOTV. Obama’s people have been working the state now for more than six months; they know exactly ever gopher hole that holds a Democratic vote, and they will be pulling them in all day Tuesday. They also have their own polls. If it were at all close, Obama would go to Pittsburgh for a big rally (with teevee spread across the line into Ohio). He’s not doing that. Biden is going back as an insurance policy, mainly to counter McCain’s raid into Scranton.
This campaign is looking more and more like the Civil War. Obama’s strategy is a remake of the ‘Anaconda’ strategy devised by Winfield Scott and executed by Lincoln.
Come to think of it, we are in a second Civil War.
Dugg, thanks for the link.
I’ve seen this ad at least twice TODAY on MSNBC! WHAT is up with that? Just goes to show you that GREED tops everything..and I do mean everything..
So now all the networks will take the money and whine after the fat that they didn’t know…WHAT CRAP!
I know this was directed at Jane, but I actually think it’s a good thing.
Obama’s COS isn’t gonna be anywhere near as powerful as Bush’s, since Obama won’t allow himself to be put in a bubble.
This would then free up his seat for a better Democrat.