Among the humorous artifacts of political spin, you can still go on the Wayback Machine to check out “The Next Cheney,” the Democrats’ collection of opposition research on people they expected to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008. The list is Carly Fiorina, Charlie Crist, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, John Thune, Fred Smith, and Eric Cantor. The list itself is a time capsule of the late-Bush-era GOP. There are some humorous omissions of people bandied about at the time (such as Joe Lieberman, John Kasich, and Mark Sanford), but the most glaring omission is, of course, Sarah Palin. You can draw your own conclusions whether that speaks well of McCain’s operational secrecy, badly of the Democrats’ opposition research, or badly of McCain for picking such an outside-the-box choice. (I wrote off Palin at the time because I figured a new mom wouldn’t be joining a national campaign).
Some of the Democrats’ attacks are more embarrassing than others; I noted at the time that the criticisms of Eric Cantor sought to connect him with Jack Abramoff because “Both Abramoff and Cantor are Jewish,” and I counted: “in a webpage that runs just 660 words, the word ‘Jewish’ appears five times, which I suppose in some circles is a really devastating indictment of Cantor.”
Anyway, given that Democrats are now running Crist for governor of Florida, it is especially funny to read their efforts to demonize him back then:
The funniest part is this: “A $500-a-plate fundraiser hosted by Donald Trump at the New York billionaire’s West Palm Beach estate . . . turned up a couple of potential contributors that have created some embarrassment for gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist’s campaign. One is a former Ukrainian government official once charged with corruption in his home country who was in the U.S. illegally . . . ” Yes, Donald Trump and the Ukrainian government.