McCain sat on board of group attracting 'extremists, racists and anti-Semites'
A shot across the bows
Click to viewPaul Begala, in a shot on Meet the Press that sounds like something other than an offhand remark, suggests an Obama comeback to an expected McCain ad blitz on the Ayers relationship.
Obama, he was asked about this in a debate in the primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it, pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when apparently Barack Obama was eight years old.
And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League - the parent organization - which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”
Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.
The guilt-by-association attacks on Obama are as much about tapping into a range of hazier doubts as they are about the details of any given charge, so I'm not sure they'd work on the better-known McCain. There is no shortage of mud like this on both sides, though, from Ayers and Rezko to Gordon Liddy and the Alaska Independence Party.
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