MAVERICKY…. The Republican National Committee, true to form, is going to comical lengths to try to connect Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich, reality notwithstanding. The latest initiative includes a three-minute web video featuring a bunch of instances in which the senator from Illinois met the governor of Illinois. The horror.
The video is likely part of RNC chairman Mike Duncan’s campaign to keep his job — he’s desperate to prove to Republicans that he can be at least as ridiculous as the other candidates for the post. But outside this context, the Republican National Committee’s baseless smear campaign against the president-elect seems unusually cheap, even by RNC standards.
Oddly enough, an unexpected source came to Obama’s defense this morning.
John McCain, reminding GOP partisans why they always hated him, downplays the Blago story and takes a passing shot at the RNC on “This Week”:
“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.”
(McCain also joined everyone else in calling for Blagojevich’s resignation, but added, “[T]here’s a lot of corruption among Republicans and Democrats.”)
When the Republican presidential candidate thinks the RNC is wasting its time on a foolish attack against the Democratic president-elect, you know the party is headed in the wrong direction.
