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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/03/meet-the-press-john-kerry-asks-wheres-mccains-respectful-campaign-lieberman-lies-about-rove/Leave it to Tom Brokaw to further GOP media narratives. In asking about John McCain’s fifth-grade bully attack ads, he asks Obama supporter and former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry if Obama is “playing the race card.” Question: is there any way for Barack Obama to directly confront these ads without being accused of the pasty white GOP (and their mouthpieces in the media) as “playing the race card”? I don’t think so. McCain used that whole mocking “Obama on the currency” analogy in June. But Obama can’t say that because he’s playing the race card. Project much?
Kerry, no stranger to these kind of character assassinations himself, calls it a Rovian strategy:
KERRY: But this is, you know, this is a complete contradiction in John McCain. John McCain has said he wants a campaign of ideas, not insults. John McCain, who said the American people want a campaign that’s respectful. Even you, Joe, ten years ago you went to the floor of the United States Senate and you said our public life is coarsening. You said that the society’s values are shrinking. That’s an ad that plays to the worse instincts in America, which is to diminish someone’s character…
BROKAW: But what Senator…
KERRY: And then Karl Rove turns around, and Karl Rove brings up another statement, saying Obama’s like the guy at the country club with the beautiful date and a martini and a cigarette in his hand. What are they trying to do? They’re trying to say to America, ‘Somehow, he’s not like you; he’s not like us.’ Last point, Joe…
LIEBERMAN: Karl Rove doesn’t work for the McCain campaign…
Is that right, Holy Joe? Liar, liar, Democratic turncoat pants on fire.
transcripts below the fold