Is John S McCain running a dishonorable campaign with his "lies ads"?
My opinion? It's close. It is "skirting the line" in what is and always has been a contact sport. It nowhere NEAR approaches the smears that the other side used against Palin, reflexively and overwhelmingly, upon her selection. (This will be a subject for a separate conversation BTW.) But it is unfortunate IMO, and I would like to see the McCain campaign focus more on the issues and on VALID complaints against Obama's record. For example, his long record in Illinois clearly demonstrates that Obama is not a "new" politician, but a typical Democrat machine pol (abeit perhaps somewhat more liberal than most), running typical Democrat campaign.
Part of the Democrat's problem - and an important factor of why this election is going to be close - is that the Obama campaign remains comitted to one centeral campaign theme: " McCain = Bush" - and of course, ANYTHING Bush is automatically bad in every respect.
The problem here is that much of the public knows of McCain's long, maverick reputation so it just doesn't ring true. We have LOCAL campaigns in our state for CONGRESS where the Democrat's main line of attack is trying to identify their congressional opponent with Bush. This is even sillier.
The left remains so enraged, so afflicted with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) that they just can't seem to help themselves. Now Bush IS a loadstone around the Republican, no doubt about. But elections are usually about the FUTURE, not the past.
While I may have been partially proved wrong one time in 2006, the contention I made back then (and in 2004, and in 2002, and in 2000) - and have repeated to the point of ad nauseum as far as a lot of folks on here are probably concerned, maybe you included CFS - that conclusion remains valid IMO:
An election is NOT a referrendum.
An election is a CHOICE.
MWL
