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McCain Parries a Reprise of 2000 Smear Tactics

Volunteers making telephone calls for Senator John McCain in South Carolina last weekend noticed something odd: Four people contacted said in remarkably similar language that they opposed Mr. McCain for president because of his 1980 divorce from his first wife, Carol, who raised the couple’s three children while Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

By Tuesday afternoon, a group calling itself Vietnam Veterans Against McCain had sent out a crude flier accusing the candidate of selling out fellow P.O.W.’s to save himself.

By Tuesday evening, a group called Common Sense Issues, which supports Mike Huckabee, had begun making what it said were a million automated calls to households in South Carolina telling voters, according to one of the calls, that Mr. McCain “has voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” (The campaign of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said it had no connection to the group and had asked it to stop the calls.)
Read entire article at NYT