Posted By: Stonecipher

Sept. 20, 2008

Push Polling.

It is one of the most despicable, dirty little tricks that exists in the game of politics. And John McCain knows that all to well.

Ask any political junkie for an example of push polling and the response you'll get will almost certainly be the story of what George W. Bush did to John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Primary.

So what exactly is a push poll?

The best definition I've heard so far is from Kathy Frankovic of CBS News. In a recent article she described push polling as "political telemarketing masquerading as a poll."

There is never any data collected on a push poll. It's sole purpose is to plant seeds of doubt in a voter's mind about a particular candidate while the "pollster" poses as a non-partisan interviewer.

Back to that 2000 South Carolina Primary:

Long story short, the Bush/Rove "pollsters" who were conducting the push poll against McCain called McCain supporters and asked them if they would be more likely or less likely to vote for McCain if they found out that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

People who vote in South Carolina Republican Primaries aren't exactly known for their lack of racism. These are the same people who have fought to keep the Confederate Flag flying above the South Carolina statehouse. A white candidate, who had fathered a child with a black woman, out of wedlock, would stand no chance of winning a GOP Primary in the Palmetto State.

What made this push poll so disgusting was the fact that John and Cindy McCain had recently adopted a girl named Bridget from a Bangladeshi orphanage. Bridget has dark skin and she was occasionally seen on the campaign trail with McCain. The McCain's never felt any need to explain who she was, so many voters, who were hit by the push poll saw McCain on the campaign trail with an unexplained dark skinned baby, and the seeds of doubt began to grow.

The Bush/Rove team had appealed to the racist side of South Carolina and beat McCain with it. The push poll was despicable even by George W. Bush and Karl Rove standards.

John McCain was understandably upset, and when asked about the push polling by a South Carolina voter he responded by saying "I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that."

McCain continued to reject push polling over the years and as recently as the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, McCain clearly denounced push polling as "cowardly" and he called upon all GOP Primary candidates to denounce push polling and to join him "in pledging not to engage in such despicable tactics throughout the balance of this campaign."

But as with so many other moral standards Mr. McCain has thrown out the window during this campaign, McCain has chosen the low road once again and allowed push polling in four key swing states to continue on his behalf.

The push poll in question, which appears to target Jewish voters, attempts to paint Barack Obama as a Muslim, antisemite with ties to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Despite these false and disgusting attacks that fall directly into the "despicable tactics" category that McCain pledged not to engage in, not a word has been spoken by either John McCain or Sarah Palin denouncing these misleading and slanderous phone calls that have been made in Florida, Michigan and at least two other states.

Where is McCain's outrage now? What happened to the guy who pledged to keep push polling out of the 2008 campaign?

Well, it looks like that guy left. Earlier this month candidate McCain hired a guy named Tucker Eskew to work on his campaign.

Eskew was widely despised in the McCain 2000 Camp, and for good reason. He was one of the architects of the anti-McCain push polling in South Carolina. As one McCain staffer put it in 2000 "when the going gets tough for Governor Bush, [Eskew] turns to the darker side of our party."

In addition to Eskew being hired recently, it appears that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, who also managed McCain's 2000 run for the White House, has had a change of heart in the past eight years regarding push polling.

In 2004, Davis wrote a piece for the Boston Globe in which he suggested that by running an honest campaign and making an effort to raise the level of debate, they lost the election.

In other words, Davis now believes the only way to win is to play dirty.

With a top adviser famous for his dirty tricks and his love of the push poll, a campaign manager who believes he previously lost the biggest campaign of his life specifically because he refused to play dirty and a candidate who, suddenly this week, has chosen to flip-flop on his pledge to reject and denounce push polling, it is hard to believe the McCain Campaign was not involved in this ugliness.

"Country First" is McCain's current campaign cry, but how can anyone be putting their country first while doing nothing to stop an organized effort to mislead and confuse American voters?

Throwing a wrench in the Democratic process is far from putting America first and McCain has been all too happy to jam the wrench in himself.

Mr. McCain has gone from an American hero to an American disgrace.