John McCain got caught trying to pull another fast one this week. It has become habitual: getting CBS to cover up his misunderstanding of Bush's Iraq policy, getting an assist from Joe Lieberman after a similar flub on Iraq, substituting answering questions about why he doesn't know how many homes he owns with POW chatter, distorting or hiding the truth about his health care tax, pretending he's been for clean alternative energy all along, and fabricating a multitude of different positions on the Iraq.
But the latest McCain campaign screw-up is more interesting because of how it reveals who's behind the campaign to split Democrats between Clinton supporters and the rest of the party – a campaign that, although it is pure invention and tiny, the corporate media has been all too willing to help promote.
The McCain campaign invented a group called "Citizens for McCain" in Florida. The goal was to sign up as many Democrats and Independents as possible to support McCain with the ultimate goal of fabricating and highlighting supposed differences between Hillary Clinton supporters and the rest of the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, according to local investigations of the the group by political operatives, only 58 people signed up, which by itself suggests the group's insignificance in a state of several million voters. But more interesting was the fact that almost 20 percent of the people who signed on are registered as Republicans in Florida.
The McCain campaign's efforts to invent divisions among Democrats and their supporters drew a sharp rebuke from Hillary Clinton Monday, Aug. 25th, when she told the New York State delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Denver that unity will be the major theme of her speech scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 26th.
Referring to specific McCain ads that try to promote divisiveness, Clinton remarked in her customary fighting tone, "I understand that the McCain campaign is running ads trying to divide us, and let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads," she said. "I'm Hillary Clinton and I do not approve of that message."
