State Chair Hopes McCain's Attack Calls Stop

McCain state chairman Peter Spaulding offers up some pretty straight talk he describes the attack calls. He says are a waste of time and money that could repel the swing voters McCain will needs to attract to defeat Barack Obama.

“People just don’t like these calls and I don’t think the issue is that salient at this point.”

The calls Spaulding critiizes are happening by the thousand here and ten other states where the Presidential race is tight……In New Hampshire, the calls feature people reading from a script. Elsewhere, as in this example collected by politico .com, the calls are recorded.

“Hello. I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country.”

McCain’s national campaign and the RNC confirm that the calls are authentic. But neither was willing to discuss them on tape. The Obama campaign, for its part, blasted the Ayers calls as dishonest -- and as a political tactic John McCain used to take pride in disparaging. But during Wednesday’s debate the Arizona Senator seemed to want to have the Ayers issue both ways, distancing himself from the attack as he simultaneously worked to keep it alive..

“I don’t care about an old washed up terrorist, but we need to know the full extent of that relationship.”