McCain's Slimy Robo-calls

Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo reports that the McCain campaign is blanketing the battleground states with just the kind of slimy robo-calls that he denounced as they were used against him by the Bush campaign in 2000. The calls, consisting of fact-free recorded messages, seek to portray Obama as "a friend of terrorists, as a vaguely sinister other, as not genuinely committed to defending our country, and as callously indifferent to the lives of newborn babies."

Sargent notes that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN are calling this for what it is. Both McCain and running mate Sarah Palin are speaking of Obama in much less negative terms in their public appearances.

This is just the sort of tactic that prompted Colin Powell to say that McCain has "gone too far" in his attacks on Obama as Powell endorsed Obama on Meet the Press today.

Can the McCain campaign sink any lower?

--Ballard Burgher