Du Researchers -- Have at it.

Was it ever determined who was responsible for the 2000 push-polling in South Carolina that implied John McCain had fathered a black child? If so, who was responsible? My local paper claims the calls were anonymous.

And his Christian Coalition?

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/21/the_anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04123/308586.stm

Prominent among the political axioms apparent since the presidential campaign of 2000 is that no one plays the smear game as brilliantly and effectively as Karl Rove, aka Bush's brain, aka the White House's chief political adviser, aka The Man Behind the Curtain.

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Now, certainly the glowing military resumes of people like John McCain, whom Bush opposed in the 2000 primaries, and Max Cleland, whom the administration opposed in the midterm elections of 2002, did not spook Rove in the least. In other words, Rove has walked Bush through this political minefield before and has lived to tell about it.

McCain, a fighter pilot shot down and imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, saw his whole family trashed by the Rove machine after McCain had the temerity to beat Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary. Soon afterward, phone workers in South Carolina started making calls to potential primary voters there asking hypothetical questions about whether they'd be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he'd fathered an illegitimate black child.

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I don't think they will ever find that out, unless someone close to that slimy scumbag comes forward