The 10 Dirtiest Election Tricks the Republicans Have Tried So Far

As Arianna Huffington warns Democrats, an increasingly desperate John McCain and the GOP are throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama. No wonder they called Joe the Plumber. So this week brought racist mailers, a tidal wave of robo-calls, more Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin's love of the "pro-American areas of this great nation" and McCain's outlandish claim that ACORN is "destroying the fabric of democracy."

Reed Hundt from Talking Points Memo writes, "The McCain plan will be to give up on the national popular vote and re-run the Bush campaign of 2000. By voter intimidation and robo-calls and litigation and outrageous allegations, it will aim for victory in the states that can provide an Electoral College victory. In this case, that means McCain will focus his diminished but vigorous efforts on Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Virginia. In each state we need hardly ask what images, stereotypes and fears the McCain campaign will hope to evoke."

The attacks by McCain and his surrogates are already at fever pitch -- and there is clearly a tidal wave on its way:

1. Rush Limbaugh's Racist Tactics: Bringing this toxic collection together in one despicable no-goodie bag was Rush Limbaugh, who charged that Obama -- aided and abetted by Ayers and ACORN -- is "smack dab in the middle" of a 30-year plot to teach black children to "hate, hate, hate" America.

2. Racist Attacks on Immigration: Sarah Posner for the American Prospect's blog writes: "A newly formed political action committee, the National Republican Trust PAC, is buying up e-mail blasts to the readers of conservative outlets like Newsmax and Townhall to raise money for what it calls a 'shock and awe' advertising blitz against Barack Obama in key states in the last weeks of the campaign. One of the e-mails uses the screamer headline, 'Obama's Plan: Mohamed Atta Gets His Drivers License,' while another says Republicans should 'employ Hillary Clinton's strategy' to 'expose Obama for the dangerous radical he is.'" The PAC was founded by Scott Wheeler, a former correspondent for the Moonie-owned Insight magazine, and Peter Leitner, a former Pentagon adviser and president of the Higgins Counterterrorism Research Center, which trains law enforcement personnel on counterterrorism.

3. Robo-Calls: John McCain and the GOP have launched a massive robo-call effort across the country that the normally soft-spoken Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called "scummy:" "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's surprised at 'scummy' tactics employed by Republican John McCain's presidential campaign and 'can't believe John McCain knows what's going on.'" And Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins decried the robo-calls last week: "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," said Collins' spokesman, Kevin Kelley. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately."

The robo-calls, sent Thursday in several states, said Obama "worked closely with domestic terrorist" Ayers. Obama, a child when Ayers was active in the Weather Underground in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.

The robo-call message was repeated in a campaign flier mailed this week by the Nevada Republican Party. The four-page mailer calls Ayers a "terrorist, radical friend of Obama" and contains several images of both men.

On "Fox News Sunday," on Oct. 19, McCain defended himself to Fox Host Chris Wallace:

Wallace: But Senator, back, if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo-calls, you called these hate calls and you said --

McCain: They were.

Wallace: And you said the following: "I promise you I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic." Now you've hired the same guy who did the robo-calls against you to, reportedly, to do the robo-calls against Obama, and the Republican senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo-calls. Will you do that?

McCain: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that -- things that this is -- this is dramatically different and either you haven't -- didn't see those things in 2000.

Wallace: No, I saw them.

McCain: Or you don't know the difference between that and what is a legitimate issue, and that is Senator Obama being truthful with the American people.

4. Widespread Voter Intimidation: AlterNet's Steve Rosenfeld reported on the widespread efforts by Republicans at various state offices to intimidate voters: "As the presidential election comes to a close, the Republican Party -- and its allies in law enforcement at the FBI and at county levels in Ohio -- are announcing voting-related prosecutions that civil rights advocates say are intended to intimidate voters, despite prosecutorial rules that bar these disclosures before an election." Recently in Wisconsin, Democrats accused the state GOP of trying to "intimidate voters by seeking people with military and law enforcement experience to watch Milwaukee polls on Election Day." In a recent e-mail, the state GOP director of Election Day operations, Jon Waclawski, said he was looking specifically for names of "Milwaukee area veterans, policemen, security personnel, firefighters, etc." Rosenfeld reports that a potentially much larger intimidation effort is on its way:

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court told Ohio's Republican Party it was not entitled to a list of 200,000-plus Ohioans whose voter registration information did not match Social Security and state driver's license databases. What did the Ohio party do? It went judge shopping, filing a closely related suit before Ohio's Supreme Court. Pennsylvania's GOP filed a similar suit on Friday. In Wisconsin, litigation on this issue is ongoing. Why are Republicans so intent on obtaining this information? ...

In recent weeks, the McCain-Palin campaign and Republican Party have embarked on a major media and litigation strategy to cast as much doubt as possible on the veracity of the 2008 vote. A look at the campaign's recent messaging and GOP tactics from Ohio's 2004 election suggest another use for the non-match lists: to target voters for mass phone calls, mailings or other messaging to deter them from voting on Nov. 4.

5. RNC Sends out Preposterous Mailer Suggesting Obama Hates Newborn Children: