Did you know that John McCain lambasted the North Carolina GOP’s anti-Obama/Jeremiah Wright ad without having seen it?

Yes, this noxious little tidbit was tucked into an AP story three days ago when the controversy broke and has been little remarked upon since. When I mentioned this fact at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference dinner last night, much of the audience gasped. Obviously, the word hasn’t gotten out there enough:

The ad opens with a photo of Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright together and a clip of Wright, whose incendiary comments about race have bedeviled Obama.

“He’s just too extreme for North Carolina,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot. “We asked them not to run it,” McCain told reporters traveling with him in Kentucky. “I’m sending them an e-mail as we speak asking them to take it down.

“I don’t know why they do it. Obviously, I don’t control them, but I’m making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there’s no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don’t want it,” McCain said.

McCain said the ad was described to him: “I didn’t see it, and I hope that I don’t see it.”

Let me repeat that:

“I didn’t see it, and I hope that I don’t see it.”

He didn’t bother to watch the 41-second video before his campaign leaned on the NC GOP to withdraw it.

He doesn’t want to see it, lest he sully his delicate eyes.

Yet, he’s so indignantly sure “that there’s no place for that kind of campaigning.”

And then he has the gall to turn around and knock Obama’s elitism.

Congratulations, Sen. McCain: You’ve out-snobbed Snobama.

Yes, without having seen the ad or talked directly to the NC GOP officials, he’s absolutely convinced that he’s right about his knee-jerk assessment of their supposedly bigoted motives.

McCain Math is the same as MSM Math: Southern + Republican + video featuring radical leftists who happen to be black = RACISTRACISTRACISTRACISTDANGERWILLROBINSON!

Naturally, McCain’s New York Times editorial board endorsers at the NYTimes were happy to oblige and pile on with a Pavlovian editorial this morning calling the ad racist and divisive, “shameful and ugly.” Congratulations for giving your friends at the NYTimes the rope to hang North Carolina Republicans, Sen. McCain:

The assertion that Mr. Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina” is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state…Senator McCain was right when he said, of the new ad, that “there’s no place for that kind of campaigning — and the American people don’t want it, period.”

Now he needs to get his party to listen.

Here’s the vid from yesterday’s Today Show interview with McCain that I blogged about yesterday:

The transcript:

VIEIRA: Okay. I want to switch gears here and talk about the latest controversy. It’s over an ad in North Carolina coming two weeks before the Democratic primary.

VOICE OVER: For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: And then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no.

VIEIRA: The ad says, quote, “just too extreme for North Carolina.” Now, you have called this ad degrading and you’ve asked the state party to pull it. But so far, they’ve refused to do that. Why do you think they’re not listening to you, a? And why do you believe they would continue to raise questions about Senator Obama’s patriotism?

McCAIN: They’re not listening to me because they’re out of touch with reality in the Republican party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable. I have said that. It will harm the Republicans’ cause. And I’ve done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue. I have engaged in and will continue a respectful campaign of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton.

VIEIRA: Senator Obama said if you wanted to, you could get that ad pulled because you are, after all, the nominee and the standard bearer. So if you can’t get the ad pulled, does it raise any questions about your leadership?

McCAIN: I don’t know exactly how to respond to that, except that I would hope that Senator Obama would repudiate and apologize for his remarks concerning the heartland of America where his elitist remarks indicated that people who are hardworking dedicated people, who harbor traditional values and principles and value their religion and the Second Amendment of the Constitution would not be treated in an elitist fashion. I hope he’ll apologize for that.

How about you apologize first, Sen. McCain, for running to the liberal media to once again trash conservatives as racists for exposing hard truths about the hard Left?

“Calm down?”

Not bloody likely.

***

Following the cue of McCain and Howard Dean, there are now two TV stations who refuse to play the ad because it is “offensive.”

Always happy to show it here again (with a reminder that the NCGOP could use your financial support):

Meanwhile, McCain continues to give himself special dispensation to challenge Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers.

Because, you see, raising questions about a Radical of Color is “not appropriate and unhelpful,” but raising questions about a Radical of Pallor is McCain-tested and RNC-approved.

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