Campaign to smear Palin professionally done. Linked to Obama?

The Jawa Report has the story, but here is a short summary:

Extensive research was conducted by the Jawa Report to determine the source of smears directed toward Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Those smears included false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views.

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.


• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.


• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.


• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.


• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.


• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod's firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as "astroturfing."


• David Axelrod is Barack Obama's chief media strategist.


• The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe.

The evidence that Rusty Shackleford and his cohorts (Ace, Dan Riehl, and Patterico) gathered is pretty convincing, but what is more damning is the response. Immediately (one hour or less) after the story was posted those named in it began closing Youtube accounts and editing wikipedia pages.

More from Ace here and here.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I feel like, "Hey this is big league politics what did you expect?" On the other hand I feel that a) If the Obama campaign wants to put this stuff out there they should stand behind it b) That if it isn't an actual violation of the election laws it's a violation of the spirit and c) Like the refusal of public financing it shows a manipulative lying side to Obama that is at deep contrast with his public persona.

Others are concerned about the impact of faux grassroots campaigns. I'm not that is what political campaigning is all about. What I am concerned about is what it says about the candidate. I am also a little concerned that journalists that can find a lie in anything that John McCain says up to and including Hello, somehow can't find / factcheck videos like this. I have a hard time believing they have never seen it when one of the main points of the "grassroots campaign" at the Daily Kos was to e-mail it to journalists. I think is I suddenly got a hundred emails sending me the same video I might be curious about the source.