Saying that John McCain supports child molesters is of course untrue, but it is less of a falsehood than McCain is saying about Obama on this topic. A new ad gives a distorted view of a bill Obama backed:
Obama’s one accomplishment? Legislation to teach “comprehensive sex education” to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?
That’s quite a distortion of the bill. Marc Ambinder explains:
Basically, the ad links Barack Obama with sex-ed for kindergartners. It implies that Obama favors teaching these kids dirrrty, explicity, sexual things. The bill in question — never passed, by the way — was intended to sanction the teaching of basic boundary lessons to young children, as in: if someone touches you or makes you uncomfortable, tell an adult. Those who oppose this believe that parents ought to be the ones imparting those lessons, so it’s not entirely a non-issue.
But the gap between the implication (Obama has liberal, radical views about sexuality) and the reality in this ad is pretty big and fairly consequential.
The “gap” here between McCain’s implication and reality is really a lie. If we were to engage in McCain’s tactics, a claim that McCain’s opposition to this represents support for child molesters would be less untrue than the claims made in this ad. The bill even contained a provision for parents to opt out of such instruction, making it even less of a real issue.
Bill Burton has issued this response for Obama’s campaign:
“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”
This isn’t the only dishonest aspect of the ad. During the convention their line was that Obama had no legislative accomplishments. Now they point to this one bill, but still ignore Obama’s many legislative accomplishments. Among Obama’s many accomplishments was ethics reform. That is something which John McCain needs to learn about.
What the neo-cons are doing to Obama is disgusting! Twisting everything he says, every statement is being distorted into disturbing lies. This is the kind of leadership the conservatives thrive on. Still, no substance, only misleading lies from the morally corrupt conservative gutters. Lies, lies and more lies. Is this an honorable McCain campaign? Where is the substance?
Fred,
Technically it might be argued that this is not a McCain campaign–honorable or dishonorable. It is a Karl Rove campaign as McCain hired the same Karl Rove people who successfully smeared him in 2000.
I guess this is one case where McCain really has looked at who has the most effective ideas. He is generally not so willing to consider the views of others. Unfortunately he did so in the wrong situation.
Angellight,
This is a typical Karl Rove strategy. Keep throwing out the smears and distract people from everything else. In this case the McCain campaign has even admitted they don’t consider the election to be over the issues.