Someone should explain to ABC: it ain't "dirty" if it's true. GMA got the collective vapors this morning over the robo-calls the RNC and McCain campaign are making, informing voters of Barack Obama's close association with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.
In GMA's book, there's no real difference between these calls—which Cokie Roberts alluded to as "dirtier" tactics—and the calls made against McCain during the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary.
Except there is a difference. A big, fundamental one: what's said in the current calls is true. Obama did work closely with Ayers. What was said in the 2000 calls against McCain in South Carolina was false: he didn't father a black child out of wedlock. He and wife Cindy adopted a Bangladeshi child.
View video here.
Confirmed Obama-phile David Wright narrated the segment.
DAVID WRIGHT: In some of the battlegrounds, the McCain campaign has launched a barrage of automated phone calls, with nasty accusations about Obama.
Cut to audio clip of man reading the script seen in the screencap.
WRIGHT: In 2000, McCain had similar phone calls used against him.
Cut to clip of McCain [from 2000?] condemning those calls. Cokie Roberts then weighed in.
COKIE ROBERTS: When campaigns get desperate, they tend to get dirtier.
WRIGHT: The negative attacks in recent weeks seemed to have backfired for the McCain campaign. Their poll numbers have dropped.
McCain's poll numbers have dropped? Oh, really? Like the AP/Yahoo and Gallup polls in recent days showing McCain within two points? Or take John Zogby's commentary of this morning [emphasis added]:
Today is the single biggest day for John McCain since we began the tracking poll two weeks ago. He reached 47% support and trailed Barack Obama by only two points for the day. This was the first full 24-hour cycle of polling after the final presidential debate, and it appears clear that McCain has consolidated his Republican support.
At the end of the 7 AM half-hour, anchor Bill Weir managed to work one last swipe at the McCain campaign—much to his colleagues' mirth—into his comment on a harmless segment on the soup battle raging in the marketplace between Campbell's and Progresso that Marisol Castro had narrated.
BILL WEIR: When you hear some robo-calls about --
MARISOL CASTRO: Exactly --
WEIR: -- terrorists love this kind of soup, then you know [inaudible, perhaps: "it's down to a level."]
No soup for you, Bill.
