Republican John McCain on Thursday intensified character attacks on Democratic opponent Barack Obama, who is climbing in the polls as the voters’ preferred candidate to handle a deepening financial crisis and plunging stock market.
The US economy has been the consuming voter issue for months, but anxiety has grown as home values plummet, retirement savings vanish and unemployment grows. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to its lowest level in just over five years — falling more than 7 percent.
McCain is seen as struggling on economic issues since the administration of fellow Republican George W. Bush first confronted the financial crisis and asked Congress to pass a US$700 billion rescue plan.
Since earlier this week, his campaign has sought to change the subject, deploying running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to question Obama’s character. Last weekend, she charged that Obama sees the US differently than most Americans and had been “palling around with terrorists,” a reference to William Ayers, a founder of the violent Vietnam-era group the Weather Underground.
In his own strongest criticism of Obama, McCain told a Wisconsin town hall crowd on Thursday: “We need to know the full extent of the relationship” with Ayers.
Loud cheers from 4,000 people gathered at a sports complex near Milwaukee greeted McCain’s attacks.
“Look, we don’t care about an old, washed-up terrorist and his wife,” McCain said. “That’s not the point here.”
“He’s a terrorist,” a man in the audience screamed, without making clear to whom he was referring.
“We need to know the full extent of the relationship,” McCain said.
McCain told supporters that Obama had not been truthful in describing his relationship with Ayers, adding that Obama has “a clear radical, far-left pro-abortion record.”
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