Too.Many.Metaphors: Swiftboating the GOP

What goes around comes around.
He who lives by the sword...
Payback's a bitch.
Hoisted on their own petard.

There are just too many metaphors.

As new groups form to attack John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In 2004 it was Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry smearing the service of John Kerry.

And John McCain continued to campaign for the man responsible.

Now a man named:

Jerry Kiley has formed the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, a non-profit, non-partisan group that will collect money for negative advertising in the months leading up to the primary.

Kiley, a Vietnam veteran, said that McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and presidential hopeful, has abandoned the causes of Vietnam veterans and prisoners of war, despite being a former Vietnam POW himself.

Raw Story spoke to Kiley and fellow vet Ted Sampley who teamed up with Kiley in 2004 to found, yes, Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.

"We will expose how McCain has supported the brutal and repressive Communist regime in Vietnam," [Kiley] said. "You have to ask why a man who was a POW would support this regime?"

"He led the way on normalizing relations with Vietnam, and it took away all our leverage on prisoner of war issues," Sampley said. "McCain has proudly touted for years that he and Kerry were saviors of the POW issue, but he's really the betrayer of the issue."

Sampley has also long hammered away at McCain's mental state and argues that his experience in a Vietnamese POW camp makes him unfit to serve as president.

"The Chinese and Soviets, the Communist Vietnamese, they had sole control over him, they know more about him than the American people or than he knows about himself," Sampley asserted. "He's done somethings that they're holding over his head, and with how that affects a man, should he really be president?"

Kiley also suggested that McCain had problems controlling his temper and challenged the senator's sincerity in his current presidential campaign.

"Our basic message is that he's a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he pretends to be something he's not," he said. "He pretends to be a conservative Republican but he's not the man that people have projected onto him."

Not to be outdone:

A group of Massachusetts Republicans is planning to launch a Web site on Monday that highlights flip-flops in the record of their former leader, presidential contender Mitt Romney.

The so-called Massachusetts Republicans for Truth is also pledging to run radio and television ads across the country as Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, seeks the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

The Massachusetts Republicans for Truth claim on their web site that their "focus is on nonpartisan education and advocacy on important national issues. It is not our intent to support or come out against any one candidate. It is neither our intent to favor nor to come out against any one candidate." However, the The Romeny Report is apparently their first "educational" project.

They will go live on Monday, March 12, 2007. In the meantime, they've released a press release (.doc link):

As we are from Massachusetts, we felt that it was important to start with Romney so that voters across the Nation have all the facts regarding his real record on the issues. We cut through all the political rhetoric to get to the truth. Our report should help to educate voters as it shows a clear pattern of flip-flops and half-truths from our former Governor on the important issues.

Now anyone with a grudge, a plausible case, money and some web authoring skills feels free to enter the race to the bottom of smear politics. More gifts from the Genius of Karl Rove. (TM)