Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Is McCain going to bring up Ayers on Wednesday?

It is likely, and of course it will be a loosing argument. Who should care about such a side story while the economy is collapsing?

read more digg story
Sen. Barack Obama is pushing back anew against the "palling around with terrorists" charge -- running two television advertisements and a radio spot in states where the Republican Party has ads noting his association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers.The subject is expected to arise in Wednesday night's debate. Sen. John McCain, in fact, said Obama had "probably ensured" that the subject will come up -- and that he was astonished to hear Obama accuse him of being too afraid to say it to his face in their two earlier encounters.
"It's not that I give a damn about some old washed-up terrorist and his terrorist wife, that on 2001, said they'd wished they'd bombed more," McCain told a radio interviewer.
"What I care about, and what the American people care about, is whether he is being truthful with the American people, whether it be on raising taxes, or whether it be his commitment to take public financing," McCain continued, "or whether it be his association with Ayers, who he said was a guy in the neighborhood when the fact is he launched his political career in Bill Ayers' living room."
The Obama ads directly take on that charge, and others. One of Obama's TV ad shows an exterior shot of a Ramada Inn and a narrator, with a weary-sounding tisk-tisk, says Obama started his "first campaign here, not in anyone's living room."
"John McCain admits if the election is about the economy, he's going to lose," the television ad says.
The controversy over Ayers appears to have had little negative impact on Obama. In a just released NYT-CBS News poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they had already heard "a lot" or "some" about Obama's association with Ayers. But only 9 percent volunteered that they were bothered by that connection. A majority, 56 percent said there was nothing about Obama's background or past associations that concerned them.

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