It’s getting pretty testy in Arizona.
Yesterday, a web video from Sen. John McCain’s campaign suggested that primary opponent and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth had been “among the dumbest members of Congress.”
Hayworth struck back last night, with a press release titled “SHAMEFUL McCAIL WEB BLASTED BY HAYWORTH CAMPAIGN.” In it, the Hayworth campaign criticized McCain’s “faulty memory,” and said the Senator was using members of the Greatest Generation as a “political tool.”
McCain’s video was poking fun at Hayworth’s mistaken insistence last week that the United States never formally declared war on Nazi Germany during World War II.
The TPM Poll Average shows McCain leading Hayworth in Arizona’s Republican Senate primary 51.2%-37.1%.
Here’s the full statement:
SHAMEFUL McCAIL WEB BLASTED BY HAYWORTH CAMPAIGN
Phoenix, AZ (May 25) – U.S. Senate J.D. Hayworth spokesman’s Mark Sanders said, in response to the McCain web ad, regarding Congressman Hayworth’s statement:
“It was a mistake that the McCain camp is trying to shamelessly use to distract voters from the real issues. They may believe it is clever and cute to show war footage including cannon firing and the Third Reich’s war machine. But it’s not and it is politics at its worst, which is what we have come to expect from John McCain.
“As we approach Memorial Day, we honor the men and women of the Greatest Generation for their service. McCain uses them as a political tool.
“The real question is not who misspoke about an event nearly seventy years ago, but who has the faulty memory about events happening today. Sen. McCain sponsored the amnesty bill and now wants to build the ‘danged fence’; he voted against the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and now says they should be extended; and he wrote the ‘Cap and Trade’ Bill in the last Congress and now does not even acknowledge it.
“John McCain needs to drag his campaign out of the mud, stand up before the voters, and debate Congressman Hayworth and let the people decide.”
