Who’s smearing whom?
Revisiting this issue of which party is doing the smearing, James Kirchick made some good points in a piece he wrote for Politico earlier this week.
Addressing the numerous accusations from the media, key Democrats, and candidate Obama himself that McCain and the GOP would resort to smear tactics in the general election, Kirchick points out: “Thus far, no one with any serious affiliation to John McCain’s campaign has resorted to the alleged ’scare’ tactics in which Republicans — and, apparently, only Republicans — have been perfecting since Richard Nixon was first elected. On the contrary, if the past few months have showed us anything, it’s that the Obama campaign is the one dealing in crude smears.”
As I point out last week, the notion that it is Republicans who have a stranglehold on the smear-producing 527 organizations is a fallacy. And as Chris Brooks pointed out Monday, it’s “business as usual for the Democratic spin doctors.”
I’m not one to pretend that the right-wing is immune to hitting the spin cycle button, but let’s be honest about who is, and isn’t, smearing, spinning, and generally resorting to political-tactics-as-usual this summer.