I just got this in an email from McCain’s campaign manager, Terry Nelson.

Moveon.org is an ultra liberal group that is known for running negative attack ads against Republicans. Their long list of negative and mostly false ads is well documented. In fact, they even went as far as to compare President Bush to Adolf Hitler and opposed military action after September 11.

Except none of this is true. Greg Sargent fully rebutted both of McCain’s claims yesterday after McCain spokesmodel Denny Diaz levied these same charges against MoveOn. Here’s Sargent on the claim of comparing Bush to Hitler:

I emailed McCain’s spokesman Diaz and asked for substantiation of these two charges. For the first one — that MoveOn compared Bush to Hitler — Diaz sent over a quote from a January 6, 2004 article in the Washington Post. It said that “videos” appeared on MoveOn’s web site comparing Bush to Hitler as part of a contest for an anti-Bush TV ad. Here’s what Diaz didn’t quote but also appeared in the same article (via Nexis):

The Hitler spots were among more than 1,500 submissions; MoveOn members have selected 15 finalists. The Hitler ads “lost miserably,” said Eli Pariser, the fund’s campaign director. Pariser said: “Anyone in the public could submit an ad.”…Voter Fund President Wes Boyd said the group’s officials “deeply regret” that the ads “slipped through our screening process.”

So, no reasonable person could continue to pretend that the organization itself made the Bush-Hitler comparison. One down.

And here’s Sargent on MoveOn’s alleged opposition to “military action after September 11.”

I called MoveOn and they claimed adamantly that the group hadn’t opposed military action. They sent over this statement, which they said was their most forceful petition on what the U.S. should do in responding to the attacks. Here’s the key part:

We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of the United States of America and of countries around the world, appeal to the President of The United States, George W. Bush; to the NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson; to the President of the European Union, Romano Prodi; and to all leaders internationally to use moderation and restraint in responding to the recent terrorist attacks against the United States. We implore the powers that be to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction. [Emphasis in original]

This is not outright opposition to military action. Rather, it’s a request that the U.S. and other powers avoid war “wherever possible” in pursuit of the goal of “bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks,” a goal that the group clearly endorses here. What’s more, MoveOn founders Eli Pariser and Joan Blades strongly denied ever opposing military action as early as December of 2004. At the time they wrote in The New Republic that “we never in fact opposed targeted military action against Al Qaeda and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan.” Barring better evidence, this second McCain charge could be true, but remains unproven.

So to recap, yesterday McCain responded to the MoveOn ad attacking his stance in support of escalating the Iraq war with two lies about MoveOn. He was rebutted by Sargent (and Atrios). Today he sent out an email to his supporters repeating the same false statements about MoveOn.

I think McCain has a serious truthfulness problem. This may not be an instantiation that Republican primary voters care much about, but it certainly speaks to his willingness to permit his staff and surrogates to say anything to get him elected.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Greg Sargent, MoveOn

Posted by Matt Browner Hamlin
Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 2:35 pm

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