They're gonna regret making Palin do that 'terrorists' thing.
So yesterday, I noted that Palin charged Obama with 'palling around with terrorists.' Maybe someone should explain the term 'unintended consequences' to McCain and his staff.
Democratic surrogates say they've been given the go-ahead from the Obama campaign to mention John McCain's associations with S&L kingpin Charles Keating and other historically tarnished creatures when asked about Obama's connection to ex-Weatherman William Ayers.
A senior Democrat who has had contact with Obama's high command points to Democratic strategist Paul Begala's comments on this morning's Meet the Press.
Begala noted that McCain once "sat on the board of a very right wing organization," the U.S. Council for World Freedom, led by a retired Army Maj. General named John Singlaub. The Anti-Defamation League allegedly called the CWF's parent organization a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites.
Said Begala: "Now, that's not John McCain. I don't think he is that. But, 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."
Other potential negative associations for McCain are his long-time South Carolina consultant, Richard Quinn, a publisher of a Southern heritage magazine, and John Hagee, a pastor whose endorsement McCain solicited and later rejected.
They're really going to regret going there. It could destroy what's left of McCain's 'maverick' myth. Shoulda known better...
Update: Here's more. The Obama campaign has clearly been ready for this to happen.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday will launch a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five” savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.
Pushing back against what it calls “guilt-by-association” tactics by McCain, the Obama campaign is e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, that will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The overnight e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.
The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the last ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.
Obama’s offensive comes after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent two days telling voters, donors and reporters that Obama showed poor judgment in his relationship with the former radical William Ayers.
Party's gettin' rough. Can't say McCain doesn't deserve every bit of it, though. It is officially on.