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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Reed Reality

Summary
An Obama ad in Georgia ties McCain to former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed and the Abramoff lobbying scandal. It doesn’t give a full picture.

The ad says that Reed "is now raising money for McCain’s campaign." But McCain has said, "I neither seek nor want his support."
It says McCain, as a committee chairman, "never even called Reed to testify" about Abramoff, which is true. But McCain’s public report embarrassed Reed and damaged him politically nonetheless.

Smear or Be Smeared?

Summary

The Democratic National Committee proposes to spend unlimited amounts of money to "tell the real story" about John McCain before Republicans can "start smearing" the eventual Democratic nominee. But the line of attack the Democrats outline to their potential donors in an e-mail contains some claims that are false or misleading.

The DNC paints McCain as favoring "endless war" in Iraq. What McCain actually said is that he wouldn’t mind a hundred-year troop presence "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Overreaching in Ohio

An ad by a new outside group, Majority Action, which is co-chaired by former Democratic National Committee co-chairman Joe Andrew, attacks Ohio Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce for traveling too much at the expense of “big special interests,” weakening ethics rules and trying to block a probe of infamous and indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Guilt by Association

A Liberal group accuses evangelist James Dobson of being ‘knee deep’ in the Jack Abramoff scandal, but there’s no evidence of a connection.

New Group, Old Habits

A liberal group re-names itself and launches a $1-million ad campaign making dubious claims.