Smear or Be Smeared

* Abortion: The DNC says "McCain has vowed to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade," the Supreme Court decision that makes most abortions legal. McCain has come pretty close to saying just that. On his Web site he says, "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench."

* Immigration: The e-mail accuses McCain of running "as far to the right as he can" on immigration and of "aligning himself with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party." And in fact, McCain said in the most recent GOP debate that he would not vote again for the immigration bill he sponsored in 2005 with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. He said he now believes "the people want the border secured first" before dealing with those who already are here illegally. At an earlier debate, Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the party's most vocal critic of illegal immigration, noted happily that McCain and other GOP candidates had started to sound like him. He said, "All I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It is great. I am so happy to hear it. It is a wonderful thing. It's a good message, yes. We want to secure the borders." When  Tancredo later dropped out of the GOP race, however, he endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, not McCain.

More to Come
The DNC is perfectly accurate when it notes that its rival, the Republican National Committee, is also laying plans to attack Clinton or Obama as soon as either of them sews up the Democratic nomination. We have no reason to think that the RNC's attacks will be any more accurate than the DNC's. In the 2004 campaign, both parties ran misleading ads against the other's nominee. In the 2006 congressional elections, we noted that the Democratic and Republican committees responsible for House campaigns both had become "factories for attack ads," and that the National Republican Congressional Committee in particular was responsible for "mudslinging on an industrial scale." We hope for better this year, but this DNC e-mail gives us little reason to expect it.

Reprinted with permission from factcheck.org

Sources
Public Citizen. "Number of Lobbyist-Fundraisers for Presidential Candidates Already Exceeds 2004 Totals," 29 Jan. 2008.
Smith, R. Jeffrey. "The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail: Nonprofit Group Linked to Lawmaker Was Funded Mostly by Clients of Lobbyist." The Washington Post, 31 Dec. 2005.
Weisman, Jonathan and Chris Cillizza. "DeLay to Resign From Congress; Associates Say Reelection Fears, Not Criminal Probe, Led to Republican's Decision." The Washington Post, 4 April 2006.
Kane, Paul. "McCain Won't Target Members." Roll Call, 10 Mar. 2005. (Subscription required)
Select Committee on Ethics, United States Senate. "Senate Ethics Manual; Jurisdiction of the Committee," 2003; 12.
Select Committee on Ethics, United States Senate. letter from chairman George Voinovich and vice-chairman Tim Johnson to Fred Wertheimer, 17 Feb. 2006.
"GOP Rep. Pombo Loses to Little-Known Democrat; Doolittle Wins." The Associated Press, 8 Nov. 2006.
John McCain 2008 "On the Issues: Overturning Roe v. Wade," Web site accessed 7 Feb. 2008.
CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate transcript. CNN.com, 28 Nov. 2007.
"Transcript of Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley." Los Angeles Times, 30 Jan. 2008.
Pulliam, Jason. "Tancredo drops out, endorses Romney." Des Moines Register, 20 Dec. 2007.

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