Guardian UK: Sarah Palin's smears of last resort

[marmar]

Sarah Palin's smears of last resort
The accusation that Barack Obama 'pals around with terrorists' is a sign of the McCain campaign's increasing desperation

Lola Adesioye
guardian.co.uk, Monday October 06 2008 21:30 BST



With just four weeks until the presidential election, John McCain's campaign is becoming increasingly desperate. It seems they now feel that without the use of swiftboating tactics, McCain doesn't have a hope in hell of getting into the Oval Office.

Over the weekend, Sarah Palin addressed Republicans in California, Texas and Nebraska. Coming just a few days after Congress passed an unprecedented $700bn bail-out plan for Wall Street, you'd think that the economy would be at the forefront of Palin's mind and that she'd be concerned with reassuring American taxpayers that they will never again have to bear the burden for corporate greed. But no!

Instead, the Republicans decided to change the subject to Obama's extremely tenuous association with the controversial 1960s left-wing activist Bill Ayers. "Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin said at a fundraiser in Denver on Saturday. She repeated the claim at a rally in California on Sunday. "Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man, who according to the New York Times, was a domestic terrorist," she said.

By choosing to focus on irrelevant topics such as Obama's alleged friendship with Ayers – which Obama has repudiated – the Republicans are showing America that their campaign is so vacuous and unsubstantial when it comes to matters of substance that this is all they are able to draw attention to. The truth is that if McCain and Palin genuinely had anything different to offer from what George Bush has been giving America for the past eight years, particularly in this economically unstable time, they would tell everyone about it in no uncertain terms. But they aren't talking about the things that matter because they don't have anything to say.

It seems that character assassination is the area of expertise in which they hope to be able to win the presidency. While some of the more hardcore Republican voters may be reassured by this, it will probably do little to comfort anyone else that McCain and Palin have what it takes to deal effectively with the range of serious issues that they would inherit should McCain become president. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/06/sarah.palin.barack.obama

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Think we will see any of this here in the US??

[Speck Tater]

2. Here's the key sentence in the whole piece:

McCain/Palin "... aren't talking about the things that matter because they don't have anything to say."