It’s as if Bush saw the similarities between the attacks on McCain in 2000 and the smear of Kerry this year and wanted to make the comparison absolutely perfect.
* Bush’s hatchet men questioned McCain’s and Kerry’s service using the same people and the same rhetoric. Check.
* Bush refused to denounce both of the vicious smears. Check.
* Bush appears alongside the hatchet men immediately after the smear is complete. Check.
John McCain: “Let me tell you what really went over the line. Governor Bush had an event, and he paid for it, and standing, and stood next to the spokesman for a fringe veterans group. That fringe veteran said that John McCain had abandoned the veterans. Now I don’t know how if you can understand this George, but that really hurts.”
And, as Josh Marshall explained, here’s 2004:
If President Bush really wants to tell the Swift Boat group’s founder, Bob Perry, that he doesn’t like the ads he’s paying for, maybe he can bring it up at the fundraiser Perry is cohosting in New York next week. President Bush, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay are all scheduled to be there.
The more things change…