The Gray Lady

The NY Times did incomparable damage to its already shaky reputation this week when it ran the thinly and anonymously sourced hit piece on John McCain. Political cartoonist Michael Ramirez sums up the current state of the "Gray Lady" very nicely:


Meanwhile, both McCain and the Dems are trying to take advantage of the Times' misadventure with this story for the purposes of fundraising:

John McCain and the Democratic National Committee are battling to reap the windfall from the fallout over the article in The New York Times Thursday suggesting the Arizona senator had a romantic relationship with a female lobbyist and did favors for her clients years ago.

McCain said Friday morning he will no longer respond to questions about the article, leaving the newspaper to explain why it chose to publish the lengthy and critical profile.

But after McCain and his advisers aggressively denounced the article Thursday as false and misleading, campaign aides say the story actually led to their most successful drive-by fundraising effort to date.

“There was a lot of outrage across the country on this story, and the campaign has raised a lot of money in the last 24 hours,” said Steve Schmidt, senior campaign adviser, declining to specify how much was raised.

Both the Republican National Committee and McCain used the article as a fundraising pitch Thursday. In an e-mail sent to donors, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis asked them “to counteract the liberal establishment and fight back against The New York Times.” Aides said it was the most lucrative e-mail of the campaign.

In response, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged voters to “hit back.”

“McCain and the right-wing noise machine will do anything and say anything to win,” Dean said in an e-mail, directing donors to a Web site where they could “match” the McCain fundraising. “Turning an ethics scandal into a fundraising opportunity is just the start, and exactly what you’d expect a team full of lobbyists to come up with.”

Dean called McCain’s ability to benefit financially from the article “textbook sleaze.”

This is a fight that Howard Dean needs to run away from before he embarrasses his party more than he already has.

I'm hearing anecdotal stories of independent and ever conservative voters who are swinging their support to McCain, not only to beat back the Democrats, but to beat back the Times.