NY Times helps McCain rally GOP base

Politico:

John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against the New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship.

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The McCain campaign is using a two-pronged attack to push back against the story. First, they’ll argue it was a thinly sourced piece of innuendo journalism. But McCain aides will also strike at the source, using the Times’ liberal reputation as a means of self-defense to draw sympathy from the GOP’s conservative base.

To this end, a top McCain adviser accused the paper of practicing tabloid journalism.

“It’s not every night I stay up to read the National Enquirer,” said Charlie Black, who was with other top McCain aides at the senator’s Arlington, Va., headquarters to mount the counterattack.

Black noted he had taken heat from some of his “conservative friends’ after McCain won the paper’s endorsement in January. “We’re going to go to war with them now,” Black said. “We’ll see if that hurts or helps.”

As part of their pushback, McCain’s campaign issued the detailed response they sent to the paper in December when the story was being prepared. McCain campaign officials said the paper did not sufficiently include these explanations in their story.

According to Black, the Times only went with the story now because The New Republic was set to run a piece next Monday about internal dissensions at the paper over whether to run the long-held article.

After the TNR reporter, Gabriel Sherman, began making phone calls to the Times and others outside the paper, they decided to publish, Black alleged.

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In a blog posting late Wednesday, TNR senior editor Noam Scheiber wrote: “The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times' hand on this story. We can't yet confirm that. But we can say this: TNR correspondent Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times' foot-dragging on the McCain story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it. Gabe's story will be online tomorrow.”

Black, who has been closely involved in talks with the paper, acknowledged that there would be initial damage from the story, but predicted little long-term impact.

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From what I have seen so far the reaction of conservative blogs has been to condemn the story as a salacious hit piece by the liberal media that was timed to coincide with McCain's selection as the nominee. If it had been run in December there might have been a different reaction. I have yet to see a conservative suggesting that McCain should drop out and most suggest that there is not much to the story. My initial reaction to it was a Waxman like "so what."

I have not seen this much support for McCain before in this campaign. The Times has done more to rally the GOP base than any endorsement so far.