McCain acknowledges Obama didn't really call Palin a pig

[LakeShow]

McCain says Obama didn't call Palin a pig

McCain acknowledges Obama didn't really call Palin a pig, defends campaign ad anyway


(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) Did Barack Obama really call Sarah Palin a pig, as a John McCain ad leads people to believe? "No," McCain said Monday. The Republican presidential nominee defended the ad anyway, saying Obama "chooses his words very carefully."


The implication: Obama was slyly up to something when he said McCain's call for change in Washington is "lipstick on a pig," days after Palin made a lipstick joke at the Republican convention.


"He's very eloquent," McCain told The Associated Press and Florida newspapers in an interview, and "it was the wrong thing to say."


A day earlier, hard-nosed Republican tactician Karl Rove, a former adviser to President Bush, said some of McCain's ads were not truthful and both sides should cool the attacks.


McCain said of Obama's comment: "I didn't like it. So we respond. I think the American people will judge as to whether he and others have treated Governor Palin fairly or not." But he said he won't let attacks go unanswered.


McCain stood up for Palin at other times in the interview.
He was asked about nearly $200 million in congressional pet projects Palin requested for 2009 for her state, despite her boasts that she opposes such projects and his claim that she didn't ask for any. McCain responded by criticizing Obama for seeking more than $900 million in these earmarks, by one count.


"That's nearly a million every day, every working day he's been in Congress," McCain said. "And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn't be saying anything about Governor Palin."


Did he call her a pig?" McCain was asked. "No, I but know that he chooses his words carefully, and it was the wrong thing to say," he responded.


McCain cut off a question about the "Bridge to Nowhere," which Palin claims to have killed in Alaska even though Washington pulled back money for the project before she turned against it.


"The important thing is she's vetoed a half a billion dollars in earmark projects — far, far in excess of her predecessor and she's given money back to the taxpayers and she's cut their taxes, so I'm happy with her record," McCain said.


In addition to her current requests, state budget do ents show Alaska requested 52 earmarks worth $256 million for 2008.
© 2008

[TheMadHatter]

Backtracking already? Haha.

[Nbadan]

It's played itself out and people were saying how stupid this non-issue was.....so McSame had to do something...

[Nbadan]

The Maverick? No, the politician McCain...

The Ugly New McCain
WP, Richard Cohen: The Ugly New McCain
By Richard Cohen
Wednesday, September 17, 2008; Page

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty....

***

He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

Washington Post

[efrem1]

Well, at least don't count me as making a big issue of it.