Dirty Tricks Allegations Fly In SC GOP Primary
From Fox News ~ With a wide-open Republican race and South Carolina known for its hardscrabble politics, it was only a matter of time until accusations of dirty tricks began flying among the GOP candidates.
The fresh salvo started up Wednesday almost immediately after Mitt Romney’s Michigan primary victory the night before. Romney’s win added to his Wyoming victory to put him on top of the raw and delegate vote counts and a slight step ahead of rivals John McCain and Mike Huckabee, who have won one state apiece, New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.
While Romney has ceded that he’s unlikely to win South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, predicting a McCain victory instead, Huckabee began circulating a statement accusing Romney backers of smearing him through The Club for Growth — an economic watchdog that has aggressively gone after the former Arkansas governor for raising taxes in his state.
Huckabee’s campaign released a list of seven Romney donors it claims have given at least $585,000 to The Club for Growth.
“What does $585,000 buy you?” a campaign statement asks. “It bought Mitt Romney backers a smear job against Mike Huckabee orchestrated by Beltway insiders.”
The Club for Growth held its own press conference Wednesday to slam what it calls Huckabee’s “liberal economic record,” but the blast against Romney is particularly poignant, not only because he is a successful businessman who has funded a good portion of his own campaign, but because the former Massachusetts governor has been running on the theme that Washington is broken and must be fixed by someone outside the I-495 loop.
A chief component of Romney’s outsider argument has been to portray McCain as one of Washington’s most stubborn and everlasting institutions. Taking the hit from Huckabee while tailoring his economic revival message — so successful in Michigan — to his South Carolina audience, Romney on Wednesday likened McCain to a Democrat because of his opposition to President Bush’s tax cuts.
Senator McCain voted against tax cuts “with rhetoric that spoke a bit of what you would hear from the Democratic playbook,” Romney told voters in Bluffton. “They said it was a tax cut for the rich … that rhetoric is simply a Democratic pathway that I think is unfortunate.”
Speaking in Spartanburg, S.C., McCain, who is now leading in national polls, tried to keep things civil after announcing the endorsement of conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He predicted a win and earlier appealed directly to reservists and retired military members in Greenville, emphasizing the need to overhaul veterans’ health care.
Elsewhere, however, a group of McCain supporters known as the South Carolina Truth Squad issued a statement condemning reported push-polling efforts by Colorado-based Common Sense Issues, which has been allegedly distorting McCain’s record on abortion. The pro-Huckabee organization ignored early pleas by their candidate to stop previous push polls.
“Allow me to set the record straight,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a member of the Truth Squad, said in the statement. “In the U.S. Senate, John McCain has been an unwavering voice for the rights of the unborn. He has fought, without concern of political consequence, to eliminate wasteful spending in Washington. And John McCain understands that solving the problem of illegal immigration requires that we secure our borders first.”
McCain’s camp set up the Truth Squad to counter the kind of negative campaigning that unraveled his 2000 presidential bid. As a result of the push-polling, the Arizona senator said he has had to push extra hard to emphasize his anti-abortion stance.
“We know that phone calls are being made and they say I’m not pro-life, so I just have to remind people of my 24 years, my voting record and my commitment to the unborn,” he told reporters.
But McCain’s challenges in South Carolina Wednesday didn’t end there. As he spoke to voters in Spartanburg, McCain fended off protesters who demonstrated against his position in 2000 to let Palmetto Staters decide whether to move the confederate flag off the South Carolina Capitol building. McCain later criticized his own position as lacking integrity.
Unlike in 2000, however, McCain this time had the support of his audience, who rose and gave him a standing ovation for saying he was proud of their choice to move the flag from the Statehouse to a memorial on state grounds.
Meanwhile, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who has yet to win a contest and has marked South Carolina as a line in the sand, also accused Huckabee’s backers of using push polling to distort his record on illegal immigration and abortion.
Thompson, who has repeatedly stated that he must do very well in South Carolina, decried rumors being floated that Huckabee’s campaign had asserted the former Tennessee senator was only staying in the race to pull votes from Huckabee and help his old friend, McCain.
“It’s an attempt by the Huckabee campaign to get me to attack McCain so they don’t have to,” Thompson said. “Huckabee hasn’t said anything about McCain … mighty strange that McCain is leading the race and their focus is on me … just kind of South Carolina politics.”
Huckabee’s national campaign chairman Ed Rollins responded that he has no idea where the rumor came from. But he did not shy away from belittling Thompson’s campaign.
“He had one good night and one good debate,” Rollins said, referring to Thompson’s aggressive performance at a FOX News debate in South Carolina last week. “The bottom line is if you don’t come in first or second somewhere along the line, and your money’s running out, it’s awful hard to stay in this race. Now, obviously, Fred can stay as long as he wants … but from our perspective we’re running our campaign. It’s a tough enough drill out here to all go forward without being accused of backroom manipulation.”
The fresh salvo started up Wednesday almost immediately after Mitt Romney’s Michigan primary victory the night before. Romney’s win added to his Wyoming victory to put him on top of the raw and delegate vote counts and a slight step ahead of rivals John McCain and Mike Huckabee, who have won one state apiece, New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.
While Romney has ceded that he’s unlikely to win South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, predicting a McCain victory instead, Huckabee began circulating a statement accusing Romney backers of smearing him through The Club for Growth — an economic watchdog that has aggressively gone after the former Arkansas governor for raising taxes in his state.
Huckabee’s campaign released a list of seven Romney donors it claims have given at least $585,000 to The Club for Growth.
“What does $585,000 buy you?” a campaign statement asks. “It bought Mitt Romney backers a smear job against Mike Huckabee orchestrated by Beltway insiders.”
The Club for Growth held its own press conference Wednesday to slam what it calls Huckabee’s “liberal economic record,” but the blast against Romney is particularly poignant, not only because he is a successful businessman who has funded a good portion of his own campaign, but because the former Massachusetts governor has been running on the theme that Washington is broken and must be fixed by someone outside the I-495 loop.
A chief component of Romney’s outsider argument has been to portray McCain as one of Washington’s most stubborn and everlasting institutions. Taking the hit from Huckabee while tailoring his economic revival message — so successful in Michigan — to his South Carolina audience, Romney on Wednesday likened McCain to a Democrat because of his opposition to President Bush’s tax cuts.
Senator McCain voted against tax cuts “with rhetoric that spoke a bit of what you would hear from the Democratic playbook,” Romney told voters in Bluffton. “They said it was a tax cut for the rich … that rhetoric is simply a Democratic pathway that I think is unfortunate.”
Speaking in Spartanburg, S.C., McCain, who is now leading in national polls, tried to keep things civil after announcing the endorsement of conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He predicted a win and earlier appealed directly to reservists and retired military members in Greenville, emphasizing the need to overhaul veterans’ health care.
Elsewhere, however, a group of McCain supporters known as the South Carolina Truth Squad issued a statement condemning reported push-polling efforts by Colorado-based Common Sense Issues, which has been allegedly distorting McCain’s record on abortion. The pro-Huckabee organization ignored early pleas by their candidate to stop previous push polls.
“Allow me to set the record straight,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a member of the Truth Squad, said in the statement. “In the U.S. Senate, John McCain has been an unwavering voice for the rights of the unborn. He has fought, without concern of political consequence, to eliminate wasteful spending in Washington. And John McCain understands that solving the problem of illegal immigration requires that we secure our borders first.”
McCain’s camp set up the Truth Squad to counter the kind of negative campaigning that unraveled his 2000 presidential bid. As a result of the push-polling, the Arizona senator said he has had to push extra hard to emphasize his anti-abortion stance.
“We know that phone calls are being made and they say I’m not pro-life, so I just have to remind people of my 24 years, my voting record and my commitment to the unborn,” he told reporters.
But McCain’s challenges in South Carolina Wednesday didn’t end there. As he spoke to voters in Spartanburg, McCain fended off protesters who demonstrated against his position in 2000 to let Palmetto Staters decide whether to move the confederate flag off the South Carolina Capitol building. McCain later criticized his own position as lacking integrity.
Unlike in 2000, however, McCain this time had the support of his audience, who rose and gave him a standing ovation for saying he was proud of their choice to move the flag from the Statehouse to a memorial on state grounds.
Meanwhile, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who has yet to win a contest and has marked South Carolina as a line in the sand, also accused Huckabee’s backers of using push polling to distort his record on illegal immigration and abortion.
Thompson, who has repeatedly stated that he must do very well in South Carolina, decried rumors being floated that Huckabee’s campaign had asserted the former Tennessee senator was only staying in the race to pull votes from Huckabee and help his old friend, McCain.
“It’s an attempt by the Huckabee campaign to get me to attack McCain so they don’t have to,” Thompson said. “Huckabee hasn’t said anything about McCain … mighty strange that McCain is leading the race and their focus is on me … just kind of South Carolina politics.”
Huckabee’s national campaign chairman Ed Rollins responded that he has no idea where the rumor came from. But he did not shy away from belittling Thompson’s campaign.
“He had one good night and one good debate,” Rollins said, referring to Thompson’s aggressive performance at a FOX News debate in South Carolina last week. “The bottom line is if you don’t come in first or second somewhere along the line, and your money’s running out, it’s awful hard to stay in this race. Now, obviously, Fred can stay as long as he wants … but from our perspective we’re running our campaign. It’s a tough enough drill out here to all go forward without being accused of backroom manipulation.”
Labels: 2008 Presidential Race
posted by Mike McCarville @ 9:07 AM
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