How desperate is the McCain campaign getting? They're getting silly with attacks on Obama because of tenuous ties to a former 1960s radical once accused of being involved in anti-Vietnam bomb attacks.
Palin made the chargers today.
(CNN) -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday slammed Sen. Barack Obama's political relationship with a former anti-war radical, accusing him of associating "with terrorists who targeted their own country."
Palin's attack delivered on the McCain campaign's announcement that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate with just a month left before the November general election.
"This is not a man who sees America as you and I do: as the greatest force for good in the world," Palin said at a fundraising event in Colorado, according to a statement released by the McCain-Palin campaign. "This is someone who sees American as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."
The Washington Post fact checked these chargers when Hillary Clinton raised them during the primary (so not only is McCain/Palin sliming, they're sliming with old news).
The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:
Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.
...
But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out,
Obama's ties to Ayers are no more meaningful than McCain's ties to Ho Chi Minh. They are the kind of ties that two people who share some overlap in political belief and live in the same neighborhood, caring about the same local issues, are likely to form. The only thing you can fault Obama for is planting the early stages of is political career in Chicago.
The politics of attack and destruction are bad for America. Clearly, Palin was hired to be the attack dog. That decision does not reflect well on McCain.
