Mud slinging

GOP field gets down in the mud in South Carolina

The candidates hurl accusations of lying, Photoshopping and fake Facebook pages ahead of Saturday’s primary.

By Nick Gass

South Carolina is known for its down-and-dirty politics, and this year’s GOP field has been all too happy to throw some low blows.

The days leading up to this Saturday’s primary have been consumed by accusations of lying, Photoshopping, and a fake Facebook account, not to mention threats of lawsuits and — in a development that still managed to stun even in this presidential cycle — a war of words between the pope and Donald Trump.

The mudslinging was still in full swing on Friday as the candidates raced around the state for their final full day of campaigning before the voting starts in this critical contest that could further winnow the Republican field.

Trump, who has led from nearly wire to wire, again lashed out at Ted Cruz for what he characterized as the Texas senator’s lack of truthfulness. This time, however, the Manhattan businessman also had to answer for his comments about Pope Francis the previous day after the leader of the Roman Catholic Church suggested that anyone, including Trump, who advocates building walls instead of building bridges is “not Christian.”

Phoning in to NBC’s “Today” to start his morning, Trump was asked whether his criticism of the pope’s comments as “disgraceful” was at odds with his own questions of Cruz’s faith. In the span of a few seconds, Trump ticked through a list of intercampaign squabbles directly or indirectly related to his own.

“No I’m not. Ted Cruz told many lies, he just got caught in one. You’re going to be reporting in a little while one he did on Marco Rubio with the false ad that he put out, what he did to Ben Carson in Iowa,” he said. (Trump was referring to a fight between the Rubio and Cruz campaigns over a digitally manipulated image of Rubio shaking hands with President Barack Obama, and to the night of the Iowa caucuses, when the Cruz campaign passed along false information that Carson was exiting the race).

Trump returned to his previous line of thought, saying he is “not questioning” Cruz’s faith.

“I’m just saying that Ted Cruz holds up the Bible and then lies. He’s lied on many occasions, he’s been caught in almost all of them,” Trump said. He then brought up the mailers Cruz’s campaign sent in Iowa that appeared to be official state documents scolding recipients for not caucusing in the past and encouraging them to caucus for Cruz. Calling that tactic fraudulent, Trump gleefully mentioned that Rubio “came out the other day and called him an absolute liar. He’s never seen anything like it, and I’ve never seen a politician do that.”

Friday was just the latest instance of Trump calling Cruz a liar, an accusation he escalated earlier this week by threatening to sue Cruz over a negative ad against him. The spot in question featured Trump saying in a 1999 “Meet the Press” interview that he was “very pro-choice,” and called into question his credentials as a conservative.

Cruz brought down the hammer on Wednesday, calling a courtroom-style news conference to challenge the Manhattan businessman to follow through with his threat to sue him over an advertisement. The former Supreme Court law clerk and former Texas solicitor general argued that a lawsuit over the ad would be frivolous and said he would relish the chance to depose the candidate himself.

Trump fired back later in the afternoon, writing that any lawsuit would be “legitimate,” including another long-standing threat to sue over the question of Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency as a natural-born citizen on the basis of his birth in Canada to an American-born mother. “Time will tell, Teddy,” he wrote. The Cruz team vowed to keep airing the spot, now “with greater frequency.”

Cruz is also neck deep in a nasty spat with Rubio’s team over a series of tactics in the run-up to Saturday’s vote, largely focused on issue of the candidates’ past legislative maneuvers in the Senate.

A Facebook page titled “Trey Gowdy Prayers,” claiming to be from the South Carolina Republican, published a post earlier this week that stated he would be switching his support from Rubio to Cruz. The Rubio campaign pounced on the page, and Gowdy releasing a statement Tuesday afternoon calling on Cruz to denounce it. No link has been established between the Cruz campaign and the Facebook page, which was set up in 2014. But the Rubio campaign has seized on it, as well as the fact that South Carolina television stations pulled an ad from a pro-Cruz super PAC earlier this week, as proof that Cruz and his supporters are not running an honest race. The Cruz campaign has made the same case about Rubio, recruiting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to bash the Florida senator on distracting voters from his “own problematic record of supporting liberal issues.”

The Rubio campaign cried foul on Thursday when a digitally altered image on a Cruz campaign website appeared to depict the Florida senator shaking hands with President Barack Obama, in an attempt to explicitly link the two.

In a Fox News interview on Friday, Cruz communications director Rick Tyler fired back at Rubio’s remarks the previous night on the network with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who endorsed him earlier in the afternoon. Speaking to Megyn Kelly alongside Haley, Rubio said voters should know that Cruz’s campaign “is willing to make things up.”

Asked why the campaign would manipulate a stock photo to show Rubio shaking hands with Obama, Tyler claimed that “every picture in a political campaign is Photoshopped,” pointing to pictures on mailers, for example.

“Come on. That’s the answer?” Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked.

“No, it is. It’s absolutely,” Tyler said, going on to ask the Rubio campaign to send along an actual photo of its candidate shaking hands with Obama “and we’ll swap it out.”

“They want to talk about fake Facebook pages,” Tyler said. “They send a congressman out who was a former prosecutor to make a fool of himself over a fake Facebook page we had nothing to do with.”

By mid-afternoon, Rubio's campaign had a sharp response for the Cruz team.

“We will not allow Ted Cruz to do to Marco in South Carolina what he did to Ben Carson in Iowa,” Rubio communications director Alex Conant said in statement to reporters that captured the tone of recent days. “Cruz has proven that he is willing to do or say anything to get elected. Over the last 10 days, the Cruz campaign has lied, smeared, fabricated and even Photoshopped. We fear the worst dirty tricks are yet to come. We strongly urge all South Carolina Republicans to beware of suspicious news reports, emails and social media posts during tomorrow’s voting. The Cruz campaign will do anything to stop Marco Rubio's momentum."

It doesn’t appear that any of the nasty tactics have risen to the level of outright fraud, and they’re almost par for the course in a state that treats politics as blood sport.

The Charleston Post and Courier has had no problem filling up a new portal on its website called the “Whisper Campaign” that lets readers report “questionable political activity,” ranging from negative robocalls of unclear origin to multiple campaigns’ accusations of push polls.

One report submitted to the site on Thursday referred to a phone call from Watchdog PAC in Greenville that “opened with Ted Cruz is not honest. He earned a Liar Liar Pants on Fire rating from ? and listed some things he was dishonest about including stealing someones patent.”

“I am not a Cruz supporter,” the person said. “But this was paid for by a PAC in Louisiana that has had no activity online since November. Curious who they support, etc. It was a nasty call. The worst I have had so far.”

In another from this week, a Mount Pleasant reader reported an anti-Trump ad. “I don't last long enough to get message. Phone rings incessantly: last night almost 10 times right up until just after 10 pm,” the person wrote. “I've heard Jeb’s voice about as much as my husband’s the last couple of days.”

The complaints on the site are largely related to the Republican race, though a few are related to the Democrats as well. “Tons of Bernie signs last week. All stolen and taken by Monday from James Island,” someone reported.

This year’s Republican primary has drawn comparisons to the nasty, knock-down, drag-out fight of 2000, including push polls that spread racially tinged rumors about candidate John McCain, insinuating that his adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a secret black child. More recently, Rick Santorum accused Mitt Romney of playing dirty in 2012, after voters in the state received robocalls featuring the former Pennsylvania senator’s voice endorsing Romney for president— in 2008.

Four years earlier, voters received what appeared to be a Christmas card from the Romney family, which included several passages from the Book of Mormon designed to turn conservative religious voters away from the candidate.

When Haley ran for governor in 2010, a blogger claimed that he had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with the candidate.

Haley brought up the state’s reputation while endorsing Rubio on Thursday, and she didn’t mince words.

“Politics in South Carolina is a blood sport,” Haley said, gesturing to her footwear. “I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement, but because you have to be prepared to kick at any time.”