McKinnon: No Anti-Obama Ads

RUSH: My memory was correct on Mark McKinnon, who’s now running media for McCain, did the same thing for Bush, 2000, 2004. Something you might like to know about Mark McKinnon, and I’ve met him once. I don’t know him that well, but he worked for Ann Richards, worked for Ma Richards. Mark McKinnon is a Democrat. And in 2000, by the way, the Bush campaign, he opposed doing any media on tax cuts, saying people don’t care about tax cuts. So this is a guy that’s instrumental in the McCain campaign. In the Howard Kurtz piece today in the Washington Post, regarding me, is this passage: ‘Mark McKinnon, a top McCain adviser, called the criticism from Limbaugh and the other hosts ‘frustrating,’ saying: ‘Our question is, ‘Isn’t it better to get behind a Republican you may disagree with from time to time than work for an outcome that puts a Democrat in the White House with whom you will disagree all of the time?”’

Okay, so we’re going to disagree all the time with Obama or Hillary. In the latest edition of Newsweek, reporter Richard Wolffe reports that inside the McCain campaign, McKinnon was making pledges not to make any ads disparaging Barack Obama. As the NewsBusters gang points out, and here he is lecturing me about not being critical of Senator McCain. The article ends this way: ‘Even if Republicans don’t convert in more significant numbers, the friendly outreach may blunt the ferocity of GOP attacks. One senior aide to John McCain has already said he’s reluctant to attack Obama: last year, McCain’s adman Mark McKinnon wrote an internal memo promising not to tape ads against Obama if he becomes the nominee.’ That’s your party outreach. But they’ll slime Mitt Romney all over the place, slander Romney and so forth.