Bush-McCain racist tactics in South Carolina? Tucker responds

The primaries are definitely heating up in South Carolina. I hear there’s been a lot of back-stage vitriol between the McCain campaign and their opponents in the 2000 primary. You know what I’m talking about: the Illegitimate Black Child smears. Some in the McCain camp are still deeply resentful and place blame for it squarely on the Bush campaign. A recent PBS interviewee went so far as to point the finger directly at Atwater acolyte Warren Tompkins. You can see why it’s become legendary as a ‘Ghost of Lee Atwater’ thing. (Note: many Atwater intimates don’t feel Warren was ever really that close with Lee.)

CNN’s Political Ticker blog has been writing about it here (”In 2000, McCain was the target of a whisper campaign alleging that he fathered a black child while married to his wife, Cindy.”) and the New York Times says  “McCain Parries a Reprise of 2000 Smear Tactics” here: ”In the 2000 South Carolina primary, one of the most notorious smear campaigns in recent American politics peddled distortions and lies about him, among them that Mr. McCain’s daughter Bridget, adopted from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, was a black child Mr. McCain had fathered out of wedlock.”

I asked Tucker Eskew (former Atwater staffer and Global Communications Director in the Bush 43 White House) about it, and I could almost see the steam coming out of his head. He was deeply involved in that race with the Bush team, most famously helping lead media strategy for the Florida recount. Tucker says the heat this story is still getting reflects peoples’ biases about South Carolinians; namely, that they’re a bunch of racist hicks who can be swayed by the most vile rumors. Notwithstanding SC’s reputation for retaining some of the hard-knuckled political flavor of the old Southern stump speeches, should people think twice before assuming the worst of the people who live there?

Here’s Tucker’s response (not from the film Boogie Man.)

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