No, TB 'most people' DON'T know who she is...

Paul Begala, in a shot on Meet the Press that sounds like something other than an offhand remark, suggests an Obama comeback to an expected McCain ad blitz on the Ayers relationship.

Obama, he was asked about this in a debate in the primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it, pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when apparently Barack Obama was eight years old.

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

The guilt-by-association attacks on Obama are as much about tapping into a range of hazier doubts as they are about the details of any given charge, so I'm not sure they'd work on the better-known McCain. There is no shortage of mud like this on both sides, though, from Ayers and Rezko to Gordon Liddy and the Alaska Independence Party.

Let me know how many radicals, race fanatics, rabid leftists, and America-haters you pop up with in your "close associations" search on McCain.

Riiiiight, TB, you want me to find rabid leftists that are associated with McCain?

Well, lets look at race fanatics:

I recount McCain' questionable past on issues of race his entire career. From the many years he rejected a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday (pretty much the entire 70s and 80s) to his serial flip-flops on the Confederate Flag in 2000 (which he admits he did for political reasons -- no way, not you Johnny!) to his close association with a white supremacist named Richard Quinn, who found himself hired as a political advisor by McCain in 2000 (and still is from what I can tell) after openly praising David Duke (he called him a "maverick") selling t-shirts praising the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and writing/editing for a magazine (Southern Partisan) that reminded us that slave masters just really weren't all that bad.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cliff-schecter/john-mccains-white-suprem_b_99014.html

More on Quinn:

Yet one of his long-time "senior political consultants" is Richard Quinn, long-time head of the racist Southern Partisan Quarterly Review. That's a far closer tie than what Obama has to Ayers.

According to the blog Anti-Neo-Confederate, Quinn was still listed as the owner of the magazine as recently as 2005.

McCain's employment of Quinn was raised in his 2000 presidential campaign. Quinn was editor-in-chief of Southern Partisan at that point, though he tried to downplay his role. From the NY Times in 2000:

''I am not the working day-to-day editor of Southern Partisan,'' he said. ''My title as editor in chief is purely honorary. Frankly, I do not personally read the articles before they are printed, and I certainly disagree with many of the opinions expressed by others on the pages of the magazine.''
...

A look at some of the articles in Southern Partisan shows why it has become the nation's leading journal of the so-called neo-confederacy movement, publishing scholarly treatises, political interviews and commentary that glorify the Southern traditions underlying the secession movement.

In issue after issue, writers in Southern Partisan vilify Abraham Lincoln and other Union leaders, and venerate the rebel soldiers who fought to secede from the United States. ... The magazine rarely writes about slavery, but when it does, its positions are usually not those of mainstream historians. A review of a book on the slave trade in a 1998 issue, for example, includes this passage: ''Mainstream black leaders perpetuate the myth that vicious white slave traders dragged Africans from their idyllic homeland to serve as chattel for arrogant white Americans. Readers of this magazine know otherwise.'' The review goes on to say that white slave traders were often less brutal than the African warlords who traded their subjects for livestock and herbs.

And from The New Republic in 2000 ("Race Man" by Benjamin Soskis, available on Nexis):

Quinn claims that, while some of these views might be offensive to Northerners, in the South the magazine "is considered mainstream conservative. " When confronted with some of the more outrageous articles in Southern Partisan--articles like "Why I Will Not Denounce Southern Racism or American Imperialism" or a 1991 John Rockeresque rant in which the "Old-Stock" author, visiting New York, wonders "'Where are the Americans?' for I met only Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans"--Quinn explains that Southern Partisan is an " opinion magazine" that publishes "provocative essays." Moreover, he denies that as editor-in-chief he must agree with--or even be aware of--everything his magazine publishes. Indeed, Quinn tries to distance himself from some of the journal's more notorious articles by claiming he no longer has as much of a day-to-day editorial role as he did in the past--a not-so-exculpatory defense, considering that the magazine seems to have toned down its rhetoric in recent years.
Quinn himself railed against the King holiday, writing it "should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane."

In 2000, People For American Way called on McCain to fire Quinn, listing his disparaging of Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist," his promotion of David Duke ("What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?") and his selling of t-shirts praising Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

McCain wouldn't fire him. He rejected the guilt-by-association charge, defending the man and disavowing the publication. From the Associated Press ("Bush, McCain Dogged on Racial Issues," 2/18/00, available on Nexis):

McCain, meanwhile, refused to fire campaign adviser Richard Quinn as requested by the private group People for the American Way. Quinn edits the magazine Southern Partisan, which has published racially charged articles.
"This is a fine man who worked for Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond and other fine people. This is an outfit I almost never agreed with and so this is another case where we have disagreement," McCain said.

McCain said he did not consider Quinn a racist and had never read anything written by him.

And McCain still works with Quinn. The Washington Post this month described Quinn as the "longtime adviser [who] directed the senator to a crucial victory in the Palmetto State." Politico reported (link via Daily Kos' Hesiod) that McCain paid Quinn's firms $184,000. An article reposted on McCain's website describes Quinn as "a senior political consultant to the McCain campaign."

http://www.liberaloasis.com/2008/04/mccain_guiltbyassociation_for.php

Newsweek’s recently launched group blog, The Ruckus, features nine political bloggers — including one employed by a South Carolina direct mail firm that’s been paid over $79,000 by the McCain campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Adam Fogle, who is also editor of the blog The Palmetto Scoop, is described in his Newsweek bio as an “account representative for Mail Marketing Strategies in Columbia, S.C., ... owned by former House Majority Leader Rick Quinn, whose father Richard Quinn serves as an unpaid adviser to Sen. John McCain in South Carolina.”

But that disclosure from Newsweek's blog, which was launched in conjuction with the Media Bloggers Association, fails to mention thousands of dollars in printing and postage fees paid by McCain to Mail Marketing Strategies as late as September 2007.

In addition, the McCain campaign has paid $184,000 this year to two companies registered to the elder Quinn: Richard Quinn and Associates (for survey research and GoTV consulting) and Capitol Investments (for rent).

Both companies share an address in Columbia, S.C.; the direct mail firm is located on the same street.

...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7604.html

Additionally there is McCain's close association with John Tanton....

Then there was the anti-catholic religious bigot, Hagee....

Also McCain's use of the term 'Gooks'.....

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/18/MN32194.DTL

None of this took more than a couple of minutes to find, TB, and I didn't even mention Keating yet...