So I'm reading Sam Stein's excellent takedown of McCain's Iraq comments over at HuffPo, and this catches my eye:
"It is very disturbing to have John McCain continue to raise questions about what he knows and what he bases his judgments on," Sen. John Kerry said. "If you don't know the number of troops, it is difficult to make a judgment as to whether they are overextended. ... It raises serious questions about his comprehension of this challenge."
All of which, apparently, was a step too far for the McCain folks. Hoping to shift attention away from his boss, [McCain foreign policy advisor Randy] Scheunemann cried 'journalistic double standard.'
The ugly part is just over the jump...
"If we are going to talk about verb tenses in this level of detail, rather than the fact that Senator Obama doesn't care about what is going on in Iraq to even meet General Petraeus or to take time to visit the country in the last 873 days, let's talk about some of the other things that Senator Obama has misstated, like campaigning in 57 states, like the need for Arabic translators in Afghanistan, or for opium poppy agronomists in Iraq, or a non-existent uncle that helped the Red Army liberate Auschwitz."
The emphasis is mine on that last part - I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've heard an actual McCain campaign official open up this particular can of ugly.
And I know, this isn't much of a diary, but there's really not much that needs to be said about this particular line of negative campaigning. If someone else has caught any of McCain's own people pushing this "he lied about Auschwitz" nonsense, I'd like to hear about it. This is the first I've seen of it coming from somewhere other than the His44/No Quarter/Taylor Marsh/Redstate/Freep corner of the blogosphere, and Scheunemann and the campaign deserve to be called out on it.
UPDATE - h/t beachmom for pointing out her excellent diary that caught McCain in the initial Iraq gaffe, and for a link to the audio of Scheunemann making the Auschwitz comment (second audio clip after the 1:45 update.)