GUTTER  (CONT)

doubt about candidates. In South Carolina, callers asked those they were polling questions like: Would you be more or less likely to vote for McCain if you knew he'd fathered a black child out of wedlock? Some had him fathering the child with a prostitute. Others inquired whether voters knew that McCain's wife was a drug addict. And did they know he had abandoned his crippled first wife? It was nasty, nasty stuff, and it caused McCain to lose his composure in public, which didn't help his cause at all.

McCain's wife indeed became addicted to painkillers at one time, in much the same way that radio mouth Rush Limbaugh did. Moreover, McCain and his wife had adopted a little girl from an orphanage in Bangladesh, so the "black child" story seemed confirmed to some.

Democrats are capable of some of this, too. But for sheer effrontery, no one can hold a candle to Bush, his father and those who work for them, beginning with the late Lee Atwater and continuing through Rove. When it comes to truly gutter politics, they wrote the book -- or at least the modern version.

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