When John McCain looks to be losing the race, and they want people from the base to turn out, lie about the polling numbers. Hey, what's one more, right?
Jerrying the viewpoint of polling numbers that have been getting away from the McCain campaign seems to be the latest strategy to both push red staters to the voting booth, and rattle even the usually stalwart Rachael Maddow into KerryOGore-aphobia, the Democratic fear of losing elections where you are ahead in the final days of polling.
Bill McInturff, who holds the oxymoronic position of McCain pollster, almost like "national intelligence," claims that because of high turnout the race will be much closer than the stupid media, which obviously lacks his insight, is predicting based upon polls not taken by sacrificing a goat and studying the entrails for signs and portents.
Politico.com reports that:
"Turn-out IS going to go through the roof," McCain's pollster, Bill McInturff, says in a strategy memo released to the press. "Last night, 81% of voters described their interest in this election as a 10! Wow."
McInturff says he thinks traditionally Republican states are "MUCH more competitive than is generally believed by the media," and says McCain's salvation will come from "'Wal-Mart women" -- women without a college degree, in households making under $60,000 a year.
It was enough to even rattle the generally robust Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night.
This as Liz Sidoti's Huffington Post story suggests that Obama has so redrawn the political map by being able to actually contest states that the Dems had largely left alone to concentrate their efforts in places that they could "win" that he has actually changed the balance of power in ways that can prevent Florida from being the "decider" of elections.
McInturff's comments are just the latest in the disinformation campaign being waged by McCain-Palin. Once again, though, the media seems almost like deer in the headlights with the headline, and fail to dig in and examine the facts behind McCain's Ministry of Propaganda.
Most pollsters account for women from the extreme religious right in that under $60,000 range. It would be a huge stretch, considering that women in this income range run across the political spectrum, that they would all rise up and vote in lock-step behind McCain.
In fact, for many women, McCain's remarks about abortion at the final debate showed that he was out of touch with the views of all but the narrow subset of the politically religious right wing.
McCain actually critized the "feminist left" in an AP dispatch last week as a reason for his lagging in polling.
So unless McCain has done something to energize women in the last few days of which I'm unaware, like wholeheartedly endorsing Roe v Wade, which, given his flip-flopping, is not out of the question, it seems highly unlikely that McInturff is doing anything more than engaging in the disinformation that has been the hallmark of the McCain campaign.
What is so disturbing is that the media, including Ms. Maddow's usually crack team, allow spurious stories like this hit the airwaves, without much vetting, and give them credibility.
People complained that the media let them down on 9/11, and that it was not doing its job at the ramp-up to the Iraq War. To paraphrase the late Ronald Reagan: "Well, there [they] go again."
John McCain can scream about William Ayers and ACORN and Khalidi and Joe the Plumber on the stump long after these patent lies and misdirections have been disproved or blown to bits by credible news sources, including some unlikely candidates like the Wall Street Journal and, gasp, Fox News.
They only gain traction when they are rebroadcast by the news media. I personally cringe every time that someone talks about victory in a war that we had no business being in, or when a journalist at places like POTUS (XM Radio) speaks about how John McCain "suspended" his campaign. Lies taking on the air of truth can fall into the mainstream media and stay there.
I know that no one wants be left behind as they are beating themselves up for every pearl falling out of the candidates mouths, but in the course of each speech, there is meat, and there is gasoline.
When you knowingly go out there and promote the disinformation of either party in any political race, you are not serving the public trust or the First Amendment.
McInturff's comments were McCain's deployment of anti-missile flak in his wake, looking at the numbers coming out of dozens of polling organization creeping up on him.
You have to wonder if the chorus of people not only from his party, but from within his own campaign who are already assuming that it is over are also just another tactic to encourage Democrats to be complacent and stay home on election day.
Given all of the other dirty tricks of this campaign, and the likelihood that they will be swept out of power after the calamity on Wall Street, it would not be a big stretch to believe that Republicans would do anything to suppress the Dems voter turnout.
Let's be very clear: This election is not about Joe the Plumber, Khalidi or any of it. It is not just about a man on the verge of becoming the first black President of the United States.
This is about lots of monied special interests, from the defense establishment to the insurance industry to big oil, who have all enjoyed largely free reign over the United States Government since the days of Dwight D. Eisenhower now being faced down by millions upon millions of people buying T-shirts and bumper-stickers, and going out to the polls to say one thing louder than any robo-call or infomercial can:
ENOUGH.