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McCain again raises Obama's ties with 1970s radical
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-10 10:03 WAUKESHA, Wis. -- Down in the polls, Republican presidential nominee John McCain pressed his effort to sow doubts about Barack Obama's character on Thursday with a fresh attack on his Democratic rival's contacts with a former left-wing radical who is now a college professor.
Obama is riding an advantage in national opinion polls and in several states that hold the key to the election. He has built a 4-point lead over McCain in a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday. Trying to turn the tide with less than four weeks to go to the November 4 vote, McCain went on the attack at a joint rally with his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, as well as in a new Web video ad. At the same time, McCain came face-to-face with a growing, almost palpable sense of frustration among the Republican faithful about his faltering campaign and the looming prospects of an Obama victory. McCain's goal was to tie Obama to William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, a radical left-wing anti-Vietnam War group that bombed the US Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, spent time on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Obama has called Ayers, now a professor of education at a university in Chicago, "a guy in my neighborhood" and said he and Ayers are not close. McCain is trying to score "cheap political points" by bringing up Ayers, Obama told ABC News on Wednesday. Ayers hosted a meeting at his house 13 years ago to introduce Obama to neighbors during Obama's first run for a seat in the Illinois Senate. They also served on a non-profit anti-poverty board together. "We don't care about an old washed-up terrorist and his wife..." McCain told an angry, raucous crowd of supporters at a sports complex near Milwaukee. "That's not the point here. The point is Sen. Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood. We know that's not true. We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not." A Web video ad released by the McCain campaign showed pictures of Obama and Ayers and said Obama has not told the truth about the extent of his ties with Ayers. "Americans say, 'Where's the truth, Barack?' Barack Obama. Too risky for America." 'Detestable and deplorable' Obama spokesman Bill Burton told the Fox News Channel that Obama did not know about Ayers' past when he went to his house and that the candidate found Ayers' radical activities "detestable and deplorable." "You know, I can talk about it 'til I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't help American voters and American taxpayers understand what's really going on in this race, which is that John McCain, as his campaign has said over and over again, does not want to talk about the economy, because if they do, they lose," Burton said. |
