John McCain’s campaign people aren’t happy with the fact that journalists are doing their job and pointing out the lies the campaign has been engaging in as of late. So they call a big press conference to complain to journalists about being called liars and attempt to defend the lies with even more lies:
The errors in McCain strategist Steve Schmidt’s charges against Obama and Sen. Joe Biden were particularly notable because they seemed unnecessary. Schmidt repeatedly gilded the lily: He exaggerated the Biden family’s already problematic ties to the credit card industry; Obama’s embarrassing relationship with a 1960s radical; and an Obama supporter’s over-the-top attack on Sarah Palin when — in each case — the truth would have been damaging enough.
“Any time the Obama campaign is criticized at any level, the critics are immediately derided as liars,” Schmidt told reporters.
But as he went on to list a series of stories he thought reporters should be writing about Obama and Biden, in almost every instance he got the details wrong.
[...] Asked about the series of errors, McCain aides could not provide evidence to back up Schmidt’s assertions.
One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”
If the details are wrong then the claims are wrong, this is no such thing as a ridiculously small detail when you’re smearing someone’s reputation and record or exaggerating your own. Some of those details aren’t all that small either. But here’s a novel approach the campaign might consider: If you want to be known for your “straight talk” then talk straight and get the fucking details right.
Or, in other words, quit lying and people won’t call you a liar.
Are you channelling a Bush Spin Doctor? This is how the Right refutes allegations.
Consider:
Sarah Palin is a YEC [true] who favours teaching creationism in science [true] and wants gays stoned to death as commanded in the OT [she has never said this- we are unlikely to find out]. She is therefore unsafe in charge of education.
Your arguement says that she is safe to put in charge of education because point 3 is wrong.
I don’t know how serious/damaging the truths about Obama-Biden are in the US, and yes the Reps have damaged themselves in lieing. But consider some of the ID trolls we get here- they ignore the refutation of the misinformation, and hang on to what we don’t try to defend (abogenesis etc) as proofs.
In refuting lies care must be taken not to ignore any buried truths. If the truths are (reletively) harmless, showing the difference shows the mud being thrown. playing the ‘its all lies’ card, when it isn’t, makes you look like liars- as the pig in lipstick is finding out.