Shortly after losing the 2000 election, McCain told an interviewer that there must be “a special place in hell” reserved for the rumormongers of this so-called “whisper campaign.” When asked about it by a South Carolina voter he responded by saying “I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that.” He denounced such practices as “cowardly” and he called upon all GOP Primary candidates to join him “in pledging not to engage in such despicable tactics throughout the balance of this campaign.”

But, just as he has set aside so many other moral standards under the pressure of a campaign in freefall, Sen. McCain has chosen the low road once again. With polls in swing states moving in Obama’s direction and with the electoral map steadily turning against McCain, he has become what he decried in 2000. Rather than show how he would lead us through the greatest economic crisis in seventy years, he is content to use the same tactics he despised eight yeas ago, orchestrated by some of the same people that he once said were reserved “a special place in hell.”

From “push polls” to “racially tinged” attacks, to inspiring Open Racism and Death Threats McCain is stooping increasingly lower and lower. The results are disturbing – We’ve seen what amounts to angry mobs at McCain/Palin rallies shouting “treason” and even “terrorist” and “Kill him!” all without the slightest protest or denunciation of such behavior from the McCain camp.

Where is the outrage that we saw in 2000 now, Sen. McCain?

Obviously the senator has learned his lesson. The smear campaign of lies against McCain in 2000 was very effective. Bush made up a double-digit poll deficit in the primaries to beat McCain in racially charged South Carolina.  So with his hopes of winning on the issues or his plans for the future dwindling, McCain is turning to the only thing left – the old GOP standby: appealing to fear and hate.  But this time it’s different.  This time we have a black candidate.  This is beyond reckless – and McCain knows it.

UPDATE: More results of thinly veiled racism, from Andrew Sullivan:

McCain-Palin supporters at a Palin rally tell us what they think of the “terrorist” running for president. More accusations from McCain supporters in Pennsylvania that Obama is a “commie faggot” and a Muslim terrorist here.

Comments include: “He’s Got The Bloodlines” “Look at his name” “The name says it all”

Or these accusations from McCain supporters in Pennsylvania that Obama is a “commie faggot” and a Muslim terrorist:

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his five
years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his
commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays
warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has
four children. But there is  another Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly
shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen
and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three
eldest children.

She was the woman  McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and
torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who
faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting
anxiously for news. But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a
fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered
his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years
earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on
Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the
impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about
the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow
where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200
miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain
divorced her in 1980 and  married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the
heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted
to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’

In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail
party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying
around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his
marriage. Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however.
They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who
effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They
accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen,
for financial reasons.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a
leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following
John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There
is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is:
deceit.

“When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left
behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody
around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and
beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for
something he thought was better.”

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention
and glory,’ he said. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So
he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona . And
the rest is history.’

Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential
candidate, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now
believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been
taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the
standards of modern politics.

From systocracy.com:

Palin says she opposed the “Bridge to Nowhere”—when in fact she fully supported it. McCain says Obama wants sex-ed for kindergartners—when he voted for a bill to protect them from sexual predators. And Swift Boat style groups are literally accusing Obama of consorting with terrorists.

If we don’t get the truth out to voters in key states, now, we could be in serious trouble. This is one of those moments when all of us need to pitch in. Can you help?

Click here to chip in now.