Bush McCain - Black Baby

[Kel_Varnsen_Latex_Division]

Is it true that Bush put out a poll that claimed McCain had fathered a black baby outside his marriage?

[aahala]

Yes. It’s believed that Karl Rove got the idea after seeing McCains appearing at a campaign stop with their adopted child from Bangladesh.

[samclem]

As for the Waterloo of South Carolina, most of the facts are well-known, and among this group of Republicans, what happened has taken on the air of an unsolved crime, a cold case, with Karl Rove being the prime suspect. Bush loyalists, maybe working for the campaign, maybe just representing its interests, claimed in parking-lot handouts and telephone “push polls” and whisper campaigns that McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict, that McCain might be mentally unstable from his captivity in Vietnam, and that the senator had fathered a black child with a prostitute. Callers push-polled members of a South Carolina right-to-life organization and other groups, asking if the black baby might influence their vote. Now here’s the twist, the part that drives McCain admirers insane to this very day: That last rumor took seed because the McCains had done an especially admirable thing. Years back they’d adopted a baby from a Mother Teresa orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget, now eleven years old, waved along with the rest of the McCain brood from stages across the state, a dark-skinned child inadvertently providing a photo op for slander. The attacks were of a level and vitriol that even McCain, who was regularly beaten in captivity, could not ignore. He began to answer the slights, strayed off message about how he would lead the nation if he got the chance, and lost the war for South Carolina. Bush emerged from the showdown upright and victorious . . . and onward he marched.

From http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html

I’m not sure there was ever any evidence that “Bush” was responsible. The thinking is that Rove may have been.

[Bricker]

@samclem

From http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html

I’m not sure there was ever any evidence that “Bush” was responsible. The thinking is that Rove may have been.

Or Democrats, hoping to face the right-leaning Bush in November instead of the centrist McCain, were responsible. I see just as much evidence for that theory as the one you posit.

[Marley23]

@Bricker

Or Democrats, hoping to face the right-leaning Bush in November instead of the centrist McCain, were responsible. I see just as much evidence for that theory as the one you posit.

Except that I don’t see how Democrats would have run a push poll during the Republican primary.

[Roches]

I wrote a reply to this, a reply based on fact but with a lot of angry words. I’d rather not post it because it says bad things. Bad, googleable, permanent things.

I will, however, give a simple and clear argument as to why this could not have been a Democratic scheme to run against a less moderate candidate: you didn’t hear about it for months and months after it happened. People don’t still hear the name Al Gore and think ‘how could he say those kinds of things?’ The Bush campaign didn’t immediately denounce the claims in the strongest words and explain the truth on behalf of their fellow Republican candidate. They let it play out, which at least implies tacit support.

Out of interest in being balanced, I searched for stories on a possible Democratic link with the McCain smear. I got to the 150th hit and found nothing but ‘Bush supporters’ and a certain Bush adviser blamed for it. I did find an interesting story about a veteran of the Iraq war being accused of ‘weakening the war on terror’ for being a Democrat: here. Might this be a slick liberal scheme too?