Did you know that John and Cindy McCain rescued a dying girl from Bangladesh and raised her as their own child?

I didn't but I discovered that in this interview with former Bush adviser Karl Rove.

Mr Rove's interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly is a great guide to the current state of the election.  Noting that Clinton needs to win 58% of the delegates left on the table, Rove believes that Obama is still likely to get the Democrat nomination.  Although the former First Lady will probably win big in the delegate-rich swing state of Pennsylvania - because it is whiter, more blue collar, less affluent - that contest is seven weeks away and intervening primaries will return some momentum to the frontrunner.   The next contests of Wyoming and Mississippi are likely to strongly favour Obama, for example.

Rove worries that McCain will soon find himself relegated to page fourteen status while the Democrat contest will still be headlining.  Unless the Democrat contest leaves scars on the eventual nominee this period may harm the GOP's hopes of keeping the White House.

The two note a hard-hitting (but effective) anti-Clinton ad that is playing in Mississippi from the Obama campaign.  What happened to the hopefulness of Obama, they laugh?

Comments

[Tony Makara]

I admire anyone who adopts a child and I only wish more people would do so. Particularly those that don't have children of their own. Being a parent is probably the greatest life-changing experience that any person can have. I certainly found that once my own child was born I began to think about the future a lot more and worried about the sort of world that he could inherit. It is interesting that the McCain adoption hasn't been well publicized and clearly wasn't a token adoption ala Madonna. So a nice touch from John McCain, who is a nice fellow. I just worry about his foreign policy objectives!

[DK]

Tim, where have you been?

This child was the same one that some Bush sympathisers used to smear McCain about secretly fathering a black child during the infamous South Carolina primary in 2000.

[COMMENT EDITED SLIGHTLY TO AVOID LEGAL ACTION].

[JNT]

Quite - the irony of Rove talking about this is astonishing. In South carolina in 2000 likely Republican primary voters received "polling" calls. Those who said they were voting for McCain were asked if the fact that he had "fathered a child in an affair with a black woman" made a difference to their preference. The calls made it sound as though everyone knew about it "after all, his wife forgave him and the child appears in some family photos" etc etc. Of course it wasn't possible to prove any links between the Bush campaign and these calls, but thousands of people started getting them 2 days after McCain beat Bush in New Hampshire.

[Tony Makara]

Its little wonder people don't bother voting anymore. There are times when it seems politics can produce the worst type of people on the planet.

[DK]

Article in The Nation alleging Rove's involvement in the 2000 South Carolina primary. LINK