When I first heard this story it sent me reminiscing about the bad old days of the Bush/Kerry race.
CBS/ AP) A threatening letter containing an unidentified white powder was received at John McCain's campaign offices in Denver, Colorado, CBS News has learned.
A second letter sent to a McCain campaign office in New Hampshire initially was reported to contain a white substance. Authorities said that was a false alarm and there was no powder in that envelope.
This seems to have the characteristics of a Karl Rovian tactic; but then, Democrats are now on the Karl Rove Dirty Tricks Watch alert (KRDTW).
Here's just one one example:
A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up—absent any trace of who was behind them—viciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car [and drove] down the middle of the street ... I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.
Google 'Karl Rove dirty trick' and you'll find there are 110,000 hits. McCain has plenty of past research to fall back on.