I'd rather a little negative campaigning than the continuation of McCain-Feingold and Clean Elections, I'll tell you that much.

Kind of an ironic handle for someone who obviously has no conscience....She's suggesting people vote based on the issues and not some smear campaign (and by the way, she is defending someone who agrees with your position on abortion).  Obviously, you don't care about actual facts, just trying to smear someone yourself.  Congratulations for bringing public discourse to a complete halt. 

Governor,

Maybe while you're pondering so much about what you perceive as the negative campaigning against John McCain, you'll also take the time to recall that John McCain had to go back to South Carolina to apologize for having lied there during the primary campaign back in 2000. 

You can read about it here in a post put up at the time by Mickey Kaus.  Funny how these things don't really work their way into the reporting by the New York Times, which endorsed him this year -- that is, until the declaration of the first day of the general election, and then it will be open season on him!

And very recently, McCain has been engaging in a considerable level of misrepresentation of the positions of one other candidate in particular in this run-up to the Florida primary. 

As have several others, Rich Lowrey did a good job of rightly tagging John McCain's misrepresentation of the position of Mitt Romney on the surge.  Tell us, do those John McCain distortions and mischaracterizations fall under your definition of negative or nasty campaigning?!

by Trochilus

The 1800 contest had one element of modern-day campaigning in spades -- negative attacks. Federalist newspapers, siding with John Adams, waged a no-holds-barred assault on Republican Thomas Jefferson that makes modern journalism look like the model of civility and nonpartisanship. Federalist writers accused Jefferson of being an atheist, pro-slavery, a coward who avoided military service during the Revolutionary War, and a "romantic airhead" who would wrecklessly entangle the young U.S. with revolutionary France; later they circulated the story that he had had sex (and children) with his slave. For their part, Republican newspapers, which were pro Jefferson, accused Adams of being mentally unbalanced and a closet monarchist; they also circulated the rumor that he was having prostitutes shipped over from Britain. If you thought today's campaigns were bad, look no further than to the Founding Fathers; the campaign of 1800 was surely one of the nastiest in U.S. history.

Source:  http://www.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/index.cfm?id=60B6A52B-0D63-CBBE-491EA598355F6241

Let's hold off just a second before we shed any tears for the latest poltical casualty de jour, Governor Willard Mitt Romney. 

The new and improved GOP establishment mandroid has set a new standard for duplicitous pandering.  I give him credit.  He is both a better liar than Bush and a damn handsome man!  Let's roll the tape on Mr. Mitt and see what we find:

His speech to Michigan auto workers -- this load of crap would have made Eugene V. Debbs jealous.  The vaunted champion of free market venture capitalistm seems to have recently brushed up on his protectionist reading and thrown the formula for his personal success out the window. 

His about face on the issue of gays in the military -- don't ask, don't tell was utterly unacceptable when he ran to the left of Ted Kennedy for the Bay State's Senate seat.  Now it makes complete sense.  Can we call him St. Mitt of the convenient epiphany?

His loathing of all things Reagan -- again, when facing off with Teddy K, our boy Mitt trashed Ronald Reagan, pronouncing that he unequivocally rejected the Reagan legacy.  Now the Reptilian Republican is running ... you guessed it ... as the standard bearer of the very same Reagan legacy. 

This is a guy so devoid of the slightest glimmer of genuiness that he answers even the most basic questions about simple human issues like he's a refugee from an Amish finishing school.    

It goes on and on and on with "three card monty Mitt".  If McCain is a liar, then Romney is a walking cess pool of calculatedly self-serving contradictions.  Romney stands for nothing other than what can get him elected.  Like Bill Clinton, he tries to be all things to all men.  Unlike Bubba, he fails miserably at it.  And if McCain embellishes Romney's record, he is missing the forest throught the trees to the extent that the truth is more than adequate to dispatch Willard.  Poor sportmanship and even poorer judgment on John's part.

There is a profound distinction between telling the unbridled, often hard truth and engaging in what the former Governess refers to as "nasty campaigning".  In other words, if the shoe fits, feel free to kick the other guy with it.  In Romney's case, I'd estimate that we're looking at a pair of Shaquille O'Neal size 18E steel-toed hightops to exact the appropriate degree of rhetorical reckoning.

Quips aside, if you care to be honest about the so-called "straight talking" John McCain and his fundamentally dishonest attack on Mitt Romney during the CNN debate, go read Prairie Pundit's take here, or read Gateway Pundit's take here, or Captain's Quarter's take here or my take here . . . take your pick. 

As Gateway Pundit specifically noted:

Anderson Cooper read off the actual quote by Governor Romney from last year on "setting timetables":

"Well, there's no question that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn't be for public pronouncement. You don't want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you're going to be gone."

John Stephenson has the video clip of this interview by Romney last year.

Obviously... Senator McCain was off the mark on this attack on Romney. The governor said nothing about setting timetables.

And there are others that have pointed out much the same.

In other words, Mitt Romney was absolutely correct -- John McCain very seriously misrepresented Mitt's position on the surge.  One year ago, John was the one who started talking about specific benchmarks with strongly implied timetables that, he said if unmet, would result in our leaving without completing the mission.

You can bring up Ted Kennedy or anything else you care to, but it doesn't mean a hill of beans.

by Trochilus

So the fact that McCain misrepresented Romney on one issue -- the surge -- means that it's OK for Mitt to continue to pathologically lie his way to the GOP nomination? 

You party establishment hacks make me laugh.  Oh wise and great commentator, why don't you address Romney's pattern of duplicity?  Over and over he has changed positions and morphed into a variety of personalities that would make Sybil herself blush.  And as far as the surge goes, McCain put his political neck on the chopping block not only to push for the surge, but to consistently demand from day one that the Iraq war was prosecuted as just that -- a war.  Where was Mitt when McCain was taking this beating all these yearss?  I'll tell you where he was.  He was sitting in sanctuary mansion hiring illegals to cut his lawn, supporting gay marriage, universal mandated health care, 50 buck abortions and emascualting gun rights.  Some conservative. 

BTW genius, where are Romney's 5 strong and straight sons?  McCain's son is serving in the Marine Corps and putting his life on the line.  So typical of the Rockefeller Republican elite to espouse war while keeping their progeny safe at home making scads of cash while the children of lesser privilege bleed and die for our freedom.

Maybe the reason McCain "misrepresented" Romney's position on the surge is because Mitt the "mighty morphing power ranger" Romney has a new position every freakin' day.  The only treatment for Mitt's chronic case of ideological schizophrenia is to send him back to sanctuary mansion where he can get in touch with his inner liberal.      

Martin two,

Say, you might want to consider a new photo -- looks too much like Al Franken.  And you tend to "reason" a little like him, too!

by Trochilus