Hey, John McCain: Have you bothered watching the ad you condemned yet?

Michelle Malkin ^ | 04/26/08 | Michelle Malkin

[coffee260]

Did you know that John McCain lambasted the North Carolina GOP’s anti-Obama/Jeremiah Wright ad without having seen it?

Yes, this noxious little tidbit was tucked into an AP story three days ago when the controversy broke and has been little remarked upon since. When I mentioned this fact at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference dinner last night, much of the audience gasped. Obviously, the word hasn’t gotten out there enough:

The ad opens with a photo of Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright together and a clip of Wright, whose incendiary comments about race have bedeviled Obama.

“He’s just too extreme for North Carolina,” the narrator says in the 30-

second spot. “We asked them not to run it,” McCain told reporters traveling with him in Kentucky. “I’m sending them an e-mail as we speak asking them to take it down.

“I don’t know why they do it. Obviously, I don’t control them, but I’m making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there’s no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don’t want it,” McCain said.

McCain said the ad was described to him: “I didn’t see it, and I hope that I don’t see it.”

Let me repeat that:

“I didn’t see it, and I hope that I don’t see it.”

He didn’t bother to watch the 41-second video before his campaign leaned on the NC GOP to withdraw it.

He doesn’t want to see it, lest he sully his delicate eyes.

Yet, he’s so indignantly sure “that there’s no place for that kind of campaigning.”

And then he has the gall to turn around and knock Obama’s elitism.

Congratulations, Sen. McCain: You’ve out-snobbed Snobama.

Yes, without having seen the ad or talked directly to the NC GOP officials, he’s absolutely convinced that he’s right about his knee-jerk assessment of their supposedly bigoted motives.

McCain Math is the same as MSM Math: Southern + Republican + video featuring radical leftists who happen to be black = RACISTRACISTRACISTRACISTDANGERWILLROBINSON!

Naturally, McCain’s New York Times editorial board endorsers at the NYTimes were happy to oblige and pile on with a Pavlovian editorial this morning calling the ad racist and divisive, “shameful and ugly.” Congratulations for giving them the rope to hang North Carolina Republicans:

The assertion that Mr. Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina” is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state…Senator McCain was right when he said, of the new ad, that “there’s no place for that kind of campaigning — and the American people don’t want it, period.”

Now he needs to get his party to listen.

Here’s the vid from yesterday’s Today Show interview with McCain that I blogged about yesterday:

The transcript:

VIEIRA: Okay. I want to switch gears here and talk about the latest controversy. It’s over an ad in North Carolina coming two weeks before the Democratic primary.

VOICE OVER: For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: And then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no.

VIEIRA: The ad says, quote, “just too extreme for North Carolina.” Now, you have called this ad degrading and you’ve asked the state party to pull it. But so far, they’ve refused to do that. Why do you think they’re not listening to you, a? And why do you believe they would continue to raise questions about Senator Obama’s patriotism?

McCAIN: They’re not listening to me because they’re out of touch with reality in the Republican party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable. I have said that. It will harm the Republicans’ cause. And I’ve done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue. I have engaged in and will continue a respectful campaign of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton.

VIEIRA: Senator Obama said if you wanted to, you could get that ad pulled because you are, after all, the nominee and the standard bearer. So if you can’t get the ad pulled, does it raise any questions about your leadership?

McCAIN: I don’t know exactly how to respond to that, except that I would hope that Senator Obama would repudiate and apologize for his remarks concerning the heartland of America where his elitist remarks indicated that people who are hardworking dedicated people, who harbor traditional values and principles and value their religion and the Second Amendment of the Constitution would not be treated in an elitist fashion. I hope he’ll apologize for that.

How about you apologize first, Sen. McCain, for running to the liberal media to once again trash conservatives as racists for exposing hard truths about the hard Left?

“Calm down?”

Not bloody likely.

***

Following the cue of McCain and Howard Dean, there are now two TV stations who refuse to play the ad because it is “offensive.”

Always happy to show it here again (with a reminder that the NCGOP could use your financial support):

Meanwhile, McCain continues to give himself special dispensation to challenge Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers.

Because, you see, raising questions about a Radical of Color is “not appropriate and unhelpful,” but raising questions about a Radical of Pallor is McCain-tested and RNC-approved.

[Twinkie]

You know, I’m about ready for Hillary to be OUT of this thing as well and have to unmistakably manipulate the superdelegates and delegates to get what she wants at the convention.

[Vision]

He did and the media's entire defense of Obama is that it's racist to say anything negative about anything he does.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2006556/posts

Listen to the first audio link at the top.

[Andy from Chapel Hill]

McCain probably went too far in denouncing the ad, but the message to the DNC is clear — nominate HRC or our friendly 527’s will run stuff like this and I cannot control them because of McCain-Feingold.

I still have reason to believe this was a test for the GE.

[coffee260]

But your reasoning assumes there’s something wrong with the ad. It isn’t racial, racist or factually wrong. The only reason anybody would object to it would be because they are Obama supporters and they know how damaging the ad truly is to his candidacy.

Anybody whose seen the ad can’t point out one single solitary thing wrong with it. And those who do object on the grounds that it is suppose to have some sort of “Phantom Racial Demons” subliminally implanted into it.

Huh? I’m not buying it.

I would agree with you if the ad was somehow offensive. But again, any objective observer can not, I repeat, can not watch that ad and find anything offensively racial or factually wrong with it.

[calcowgirl]

He didn’t bother to watch the 41-second video before his campaign leaned on the NC GOP to withdraw it.

He wasn't present to hear what Bill Cunningham said, either. He just slimed him anyway--despite the fact Cunningham
had been asked by the McCain campaign to do exactly what he did.

[RipSawyer]

“his elitist remarks indicated that people who are hardworking dedicated people, who harbor traditional values and principles and value their religion and the Second Amendment of the Constitution would not be treated in an elitist fashion.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here McCain illustrates that he suffers from the plague which is rampant in America now, the inability to use negatives correctly. This sentence actually says he opposite of what McCain was trying to convey!

[RipSawyer]

This is a wink-wink, nod-nod between McCain and the NCGOP to test market the Obama/Wright link as a campaign ad issue.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I don’t really believe that and if I did I would not consider it a smart move. McCain’s calling North Carolina Republicans “out of touch with reality” is an attack on his own party and I don’t believe for one minute that he stands to gain anything by it.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Did you know that John McCain lambasted the North Carolina GOP’s anti-Obama/Jeremiah Wright ad without having seen it?

Anyone still willingly shilling for this nakedly, fundamentally dishonest and opportunistic leftist @sshat, at this point, has irrevocably surrendered any and all right to refer to themselves as genuinely "conservative," now and forevermore.

Shameful and revolting.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

>>This is a wink-wink, nod-nod between McCain and the NCGOP to test market the Obama/Wright link as a campaign ad issue.<<

That’s what the Obama follwers are saying: Like Hillary, he is publicly criticizing anti-Obama stuff, but secretly he loves it.

[okie01]

McCain is obviously trying to pick up the black vote for the GOP, hopefully for the long term. Not sure I agree with him, but that is what it looks like to me.

Listening to McCain promote the aims of McCain-Feingold, he seemed primarily interested in eliminating what he called "negative advertising". Seemingly, he was offended when somebody said something bad about a Washington politician.

I wouldn't be surprised if his reaction to the Obama ad doesn't stem from this. In his mind, so long as Republicans don't say anything bad about the Democrats, then the Democrats won't say anything bad about him.

You and I both know this is utterly unrealistic. But, all too often, McCain and realism seem to be strangers.

Note that this ethic didn't keep McCain from lying repeatedly about Romney's stance on Iraq. But, then, Romney isn't of Washington...

[perez24]

I see your point, but calling conservatives “out of touch with the GOP” makes even less sense.

[okie01]

... not until hell freezes over and Hillary Clinton skates nude on my front lawn.

May I advise you to keep the drapes closed?

[okie01]

McCain said the ad was described to him: “I didn’t see it, and I hope that I don’t see it.”

Whoa! Wait a minute.

Isn't this exactly what happened when McCain threw the Cincinnati talk show host (Cunningham?) under the bus.

Didn't he trash the guy who had warmed up his audience...even though he hadn't heard a word that had been said?

Seems to me that, when McCain is judging the actions of suspected conservatives, there is a presumption of guilt! Even without hearing/viewing the evidence.

McCain as prosecutor, judge and jury.

What kind of a President might that make him?

The alternate scenario would be that his staff is making his decisions for him -- and he's just parroting what he's told.

But, again, what kind of a President might that make him?

[okie01]

Thanks for the further background.

See #93.

[Cyber Liberty]

This is nothing new. MaCain was disavowing bill Cunningham's words before he ever heard them as well.

This is a pattern we'd better learn to live with, if we ever elect this p***k. He'd rather attack us than the Democrats.

[Biggirl]

I think this could be the start of a grass roots revolt in the really RED states. NCGOPers just showed how it could be done.

[Biggirl]

When this fight first got air time and how McCain reacted, it made more GOPers become independent simply because McCain has simply left the party.

[Biggirl]

Another Capt Queeq.

[Biggirl]

That just about made maverricks of all of us. McCain is making the NCGOPers maverricks in other words.

[Biggirl]

He really shot himself in the foot this time.