The Shot!

Yeah. Its true.

We’ve never seen anything like it. John McCain is getting a clear pass this time around and only getting hit as much as everyone else. But if you were listening to his team, you would think that it was still 2000. Maybe that’s because John McCain is stuck in 2000 and trying to get the sympathy vote.  Pretty pitiful attempt.

Check out this article from CNN:

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) – The usually balmy South Carolina campaign trail seems to be growing a bit frosty for John McCain, with new criticisms from former allies Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee.

But over the last week, as McCain’s South Carolina “Truth Squad” has arranged multiple conference calls to defend their candidate from negative campaigning, opponents say his campaign has been overplaying attacks against him — taking advantage the ghosts of 2000 in a bid to win sympathy from the media and voters.

The Arizona senator’s staff is “trying to make McCain the victim,” said senior Thompson adviser Rich Galen.

“But ‘the victim of what?’ is, I think, a legitimate question. His victimhood is kind of empty.”

Rival strategists said that’s because McCain has not been the target of the same kinds of dirty tricks that helped bury him in the state eight years ago.

Until a few weeks ago, McCain, long an underdog here, was hardly mentioned in South Carolina mail pieces from rival Republicans. Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani took the most flack, usually from Mitt Romney mailers focusing on taxes and immigration.

Just days ago, an independent pro-Huckabee group named “Common Sense Issues” began a push-polling campaign in the state, attacking McCain on abortion, but also taking aim at the records of Romney and Thompson.

The only exclusive smear against McCain occurred earlier this week, when a group called “Vietnam Veterans against John McCain” mailed a cartoon flier to state newspaper editors calling the senator a “songbird” and accusing him of betraying his fellow veterans.

The flier, which was not sent to voters, was further distributed by the McCain campaign, who subsequently emailed a scanned version of the flier to national and local reporters, before arranging a conference call to condemn it.

Ed Rollins, Huckabee’s national campaign chairman, said the flier hardly stacks up to what McCain faced in 2000. The McCain campaign and the press, he said, “know what’s real and what’s not real.”

“Two-thousand was a long time ago,” Rollins said. “I think to come in here and say the bogeymen are coming again … they haven’t come.”

Terry Sullivan, Romney’s state director, accused McCain’s camp of over-hyping the flier attack.

“The senator doth protest too much, methinks,” Sullivan said. “That’s from Hamlet. Anger ended his campaign too.”

Nevertheless, the McCain “Truth Squad,” made up of campaign surrogates in the state like Attorney General Henry McMaster and House Speaker Bobby Harrell, remains at the ready. The effort began on January 8 to “counter any negative or misleading attacks targeted at John McCain,” according to a release from the campaign.

On Saturday, the campaign emailed volunteers urging them to report any “malicious messages” and negative phone calls to the “McCain Truth Hotline.”

“Technology now allows for information to move so much faster,” said McCain spokesman B.J. Boling. “We found out much faster that these fliers were out there.”

Despite the apparently modest initial distribution of the anti-McCain fliers, Boling defended the amount of publicity his campaign gave to the smear.

“When you are attacked like that it would be irresponsible not to respond, because we have no idea how big the mailing is.”

Galen said the “Truth Squad” is simply dishing up red meat to the national media, who are eager to craft a narrative about McCain redeeming himself in South Carolina, eight years after falling short here.

“The notion that’s sort of in the mind of especially the northeast media, that somehow South Carolinians owe John something from 2000, that’s just not true,” Galen said. “He didn’t just lose by an eyelash here, he lost big.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under The Chaser. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.