Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Obama, page 1

Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Obama

www.timesonline.co.uk

Well, you have to give them credit for a "never say die" attitude:

The Republicans have made a last-minute attempt to prevent Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House by trying to recruit an Oxford academic to “prove” that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a former terrorist.

For a paltry $10,000, these Republicans hoped a new software technique would show that it was Ayers The Radical Bomber of the 60s who wrote Obama's memoirs Dreams From My Father and Fugitive Days.

Like most things the Republicans touch now days, this idea went to hell when Dr. Peter Millican of Oxford actually took a look:

Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausible”. A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.

Millican said: “I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them.”

And were these Republicans just "worker bees" in the McCain for President movement? Not exactly:

The offer to Millican to prove that Ayers wrote Obama’s book was made by Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah. He hoped to corroborate a theory advanced by Jack Cashill, an American writer.

Millican went on to say:

He said Fox gave him the impression that Cannon had got “cold feet about it being seen to be funded by the Republicans”.

Cannon insisted, however, that he was not interested in making an issue of Obama’s memoir “even if it were scientifically proven” to be someone else’s work.

Sure he didn't want to make an issue of it. After he saw it might backfire, in more ways than one. (He really must think everyone is an idiot.)

I wanted to call this thread "How Low Can You Go" and have news articles from both sides showing the dirty tricks by "friends" of the presidential contenders, but BAN needs to have the real headlines, so I couldn't. I'm sure the dirty tricks are piling up in both camps, though this one would be hard to top.

www.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)