By Michael Falcone

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has often tried to project the image of a "happy warrior" on the campaign trail appears to be changing his tune. The Times's Michael Cooper reports today that Mr. McCain has become "much more aggressive, and more negative" and not all Republicans like the new approach:

    By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.

Indications of Mr. McCain's evolving strategy can be found in the tone and the content of the paid advertising his campaign has been rolling out. Several of his recent television spots have attacked Senator Barack Obama directly, but have been replayed over and over on news programs rather than appearing in commercial time. The Times's Jim Rutenberg reports that the McCain campaign's ads - the most recent one criticized Mr. Obama for canceling a visit with American troops in Germany - are getting viewed on local television across the country.
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By Joe Klein

I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear--that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations--had been confirmed by a new book. I told her not to worry, that many reputable people had looked into the matter and Obama was more likely to be spotted in Whole Foods than praying in a mosque. (Since my mother has never been to Whole Foods, so she didn't quite get my wry allusion.) "I hope so," she said, dubiously.

So we know the market for trash is there, and not so far from home. And we know, that Mary Matalin, who appears regularly on mainstream media programs like Meet the Press called the Corsi book in the New York Times today:  "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that."

But hey, Mary stands to make big bucks off this scholarship, which I'm sure was submitted for peer review and otherwise held to the highest editorial standards--and I'm sure her reputation and mediagenicity won't be damaged by this poisonous crap, and we're all friends here, aren't we? And, yknow, they say politics ain't beanbag...and it's all in the game to tell innocent, well-intentioned people that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim or that John Kerry wasn't really a hero in Vietnam. Or, as George W. Bush, once told a rightly outraged John McCain--whose wife and daughter Bush's minions had smeared--"It's just politics."    ….continue reading