Quote:
Originally Posted by jolsen42
I must have missed Pres. Bush implying McCain was a nutcase.
John O
|
You did. Beside what is below, Bush brought up the fact McCain stated "I hate the gooks" during a campaign stop in reference to his Vietnamese captors, and called Falwell and Robertson the forces of evil, which riled the christian conservatives.
The battle between Bush and McCain for South Carolina has entered American political lore as one of the nastiest, dirtiest, and most brutal ever.[13][46][47] On the one hand, Bush switched his label for himself from "compassionate conservative" to "reformer with results", as part of trying to co-opt McCain's popular message of reform.[13][48][49] On the other hand, a variety of business and interest groups that McCain had challenged in the past now pounded him with negative ads.[13][50]
The day that a new poll showed McCain five points ahead in the state,[51] Bush allied himself on stage with a marginal and controversial veterans activist named J. Thomas Burch, who accused McCain of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues: "He came home from Vietnam and forgot us."[13][51] Incensed,[51] McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton,[13] which Bush complained was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary."[13] An unidentified party began a semi-underground smear campaign against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, audience plants, and the like.[13][52] These claimed most famously that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter Bridget was adopted from Bangladesh; this misrepresentation was thought to be an especially effective slur in a Deep South state where race was still central[47]), but also that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days.[13][46] The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with these attacks;[46] Bush said he would fire anyone who ran defamatory push polls.[53] During a break in a debate, Bush put his hand on McCain's arm and reiterated that he had no involvement in the attacks; McCain replied, "Don't give me that ****. And take your hands off me."[45]
Bush mobilized the state's evangelical voters,[13][22] and leading conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh entered the fray supporting Bush and going on at length about how McCain was a favorite of liberal Democrats.[54] Polls swung in Bush's favor; by not accepting federal matching funds for his campaign, Bush was not limited in how much money he could spend on advertisements, while McCain was near his limit.[54] With three days to go, McCain shut down his negative ads against Bush and tried to stress a positive image.[54] But McCain's stressing of campaign finance reform, and how Bush's proposed tax cuts would benefit the wealthy, did not appeal to core Republicans in the state.[22]
McCain lost South Carolina on February 19, with 42 percent of the vote against Bush's 53 percent,[55] allowing Bush to regain the momentum.[55]
Hybrid Mode
