One of these things is not like the others

An ABC News story on South Carolina politics points out some of the ugly the state has generated in the past. Charges John McCain fathered an illegitimate child on a black prostitute, or that he was brainwashed into an enemy of his country as a POW. Or South Carolinian Lee Atwater’s attempt to smear Rep. Tom Foley (Speaker of the House at the time) as a closeted homosexual.
The story concludes that the current election campaign continues in that vein, an “atwaterian dream” with Republican candidates going full out to paint Mitt Romney’s business career as “vulture capitalism.” Newt Gingrich, for example, is charging that Romney’s Bain Capital loots companies it buys and runs them into the ground, rather than being a job-creating dynamo.
And how the hell does this compare to false charges about people’s sex lives? Accusations that McCain is a Communist sleeper agent or Foley was gay have no existence anywhere except in campaign propaganda. Accusations about Romney’s business record relate to something he’s actually done. As Reuters points out, Bain Capital’s record isn’t spotless (whether or not it constitutes “vulture capitalism”).
•It’s like Slacktivist’s point about the media’s use of gaffe to describe both unintentional fumbles (Rick Perry can’t remember which agencies he’d shut down as president) and statements that are intentional but inconvenient (Tom Delay’s declaration that if segregationist Strom Thurmond had become president this country wouldn’t have had so many problems).
Romney’s being criticized for things he did, whether or not the criticism is fair. Foley and McCain were targeted for things they didn’t do. Lumping both together as Just Dirty Politics does nobody a service.