By GottaLaff
And as McCain campaign manager Rick Davis once said:The premise of any smear campaign rests on a central truth of politics: Most of us will vote for a candidate we like and respect, even if we don't agree with him on every issue. But if you can cripple a voter's basic trust in a candidate, you can probably turn his vote. The idea is to find some piece of personal information that is tawdry enough to raise doubts, repelling a candidate's natural supporters. [...]
It's not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate's political weakness.
Davis wrote that in 2000, decrying George Bush's smear campaign against John McCain during the South Carolina primary, saying that:
Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.
Nope. They're not hypocrites. Not at all. They're all about the issues.
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